{"id":20060,"date":"2014-09-10T18:36:53","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T18:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/?p=20060"},"modified":"2016-08-01T15:19:11","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T19:19:11","slug":"cooking-tailgate-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/cooking-tailgate-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooking Tailgate Food Just Got Easier With These Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><strong>Cooking tailgate food can be challenging for the best cooks. <\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>&#8211; You&#8217;re cooking in a parking lot from the back of your car or truck.<br \/>\n&#8211; You&#8217;re probably cooking for more people that you usually do.<br \/>\n&#8211; The wind is blowing, the air is cold.<br \/>\n&#8211; Your grill is tiny because it has to fit in your car.<br \/>\n&#8211; You&#8217;ve already got a good beer buzz on.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/b4geFWeFbR4\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;ve done all these things, both for friends and family as well as catering events.<\/strong> One particular corporate celebration that I was hired for had me grilling for 150 people before a football game. (I did NOT have a good beer buzz that day). It&#8217;s difficult for the best cooks to create something delicious and appetizing under those tough conditions and a potential football food disaster for less experienced tailgaters.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I do my best to avoid as much actual cooking at the event as possible to limit the hazards and distractions of cooking in a parking lot. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>1) Bring a HOT cooler<\/strong> &#8211; My caterer&#8217;s best secret is how to keep food hot during transport. This is crucial to all off-site caterers who prepare food in a central kitchen and then bring it to location. Certainly, I&#8217;ll have a cold cooler with me to bring the salads and cold cuts, but what if you wanted to bring HOT dishes that need to stay hot until eaten? Whenever I&#8217;m responsible for the tailgate food, I bring a cold cooler filled with the food items I want to keep cold, along with beverages that must stay frosty as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>And there is a way to keep food hot without an open flame <\/strong><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K46ImQ7Wcqk\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>This way, when I serve my famous New York Attitude Filet Mignon Chili,<\/strong> it doesn&#8217;t need to be made quickly on-site. I can take the hours necessary to develop all the flavors in my chili at home and bring it HOT to the game. That&#8217;s my second idea&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>2) Bring hot food with you<\/strong> &#8211; It&#8217;s a lot of pressure to prepare food on-site considering the hindrances I mentioned above. Plus, not everything has to be grilled! If you are to cook everything in the parking lot, make sure you know the <a href=\"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/10-steps-to-grilling\/how-to-cook\/\" target=\"_blank\">10 steps for grilling properly<\/a>. However, a good variety of flavors and textures make for a better tailgate party.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3) Forget the grill altogether <\/strong>&#8211; If you\u2019ve been following my videos over the past six years, you know how I feel about outdoor grilling. It\u2019s the great male excuse. If you\u2019re trying to <a href=\"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/learn-to-cook\" target=\"_blank\">learn to cook<\/a>, and were to cook a steak on your indoor stove top to a black char, it would be unacceptable. However, if you cook a steak outdoors, on a barbeque grill, and it\u2019s charred black, it\u2019s \u201cnicely blackened\u201d. Burnt is burnt, indoors or out. I don\u2019t know why men think it\u2019s easier to cook outdoors than indoors. I believe the exact opposite.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wtOJx_EdPXE\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>I\u2019d rather saute any day.<\/strong> Whether at home, indoors, or in the parking lot preparing my football food for the tailgate party, the direct heat of a saute pan is easier to control and gives me greater options than a barbeque grill can.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bringing a portable camper stove and saute pan for your tailgate foods gives much greater variety in cooking.<\/strong> You can heat a saute pan more evenly, apply fats and compound flavors better than a barbeque grill, and deglaze the pan with liquids to make pan sauces. Your tailgate party saute will have more moisture and flavor than the 2 hour old grilled hot dog.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ultimately, I&#8217;ll give you the same advice I always gave mothers-of-the-bride who wanted to cook for their daughter&#8217;s wedding.<\/strong> I&#8217;d ask them, &#8220;don&#8217;t you want to be a guest at the party and not the caterer?&#8221; If you&#8217;re cooking tailgate food this Fall, don&#8217;t spend the entire time poking hot dogs with a fork and gashing hamburgers to see if they&#8217;re done. Make it easy on yourself and follow the ideas above for a unique and fun tailgate party that you can enjoy as well as those you&#8217;ve cooked for.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cooking tailgate food can be challenging for the best cooks. &#8211; You&#8217;re cooking in a parking lot from the back of your car or truck. &#8211; You&#8217;re probably cooking for more people that you usually do. &#8211; The wind is blowing, the air is cold. &#8211; Your grill is tiny because it has to fit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":21521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[35],"tags":[342],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20060"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webcookingclasses.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}