The Drunken Tailgate

Tailgating Recipes: Mac and Cheese with Chicken

From the Buffalo News via Cooking For a Cause a recipe for preparing a meaty mac and cheese. Bring it in a warm casserole holder or reheat it up on the grill to get the cheese melting again.

Ultimate Tailgating Mac and Cheese

Ingredients:
3 lb. elbow macaroni, cooked al dente
2 pound loaf Velveeta
Meat from 1 cooked chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 c. chopped onion
8 oz. blue cheese
4 oz. (1 stick) butter
2 c. milk
1/2 c. cayenne pepper hot sauce, like Frank’s
1 lb. sharp cheddar, shredded
2 c. celery, sliced thin
1 c. plain yogurt

Directions:
1. Cook macaroni al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop cooking. Skin chicken and strip meat, tearing it into bite-sized chunks.

2. In large pot, melt butter. When foaming stops, add onions. Cook over high heat, stirring frequently, until translucent and browning, 10 to 15 minutes. Do not allow to burn.

3. Add hot sauce, stirring until sauce evaporates into onions, about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to medium.

4. Add milk, yogurt and Velveeta torn in chunks. Stir steadily as Velveeta melts into liquid. (Do not allow to boil, or it will burn on the bottom of the pot.)

5. Set oven to 500°.* Spread cooked macaroni in standard half-sheet sized foil catering pan. Scatter celery and chicken over the macaroni, and crush blue cheese to spread across the mixture. Add cheese sauce and stir to combine everything evenly. Smooth out the mixture.

6. Top with shredded cheddar and place pan in preheated oven. Bake until brown and bubbly, 20 to 30 minutes. Can be covered with heavy foil and kept warm in a cooler, stuffed with crumpled newspaper as insulation, for up to four hours.

* This sounds like a very hot oven! You may want to bake it at 450 or lower.

Fried Sausage Wrapped Hard Boiled Eggs

A photo and recipe from flickr for hard boiled eggs that are wrapped with sausage and then fried. This sounds crazy. (HT: Gorilla Mask)

Scotch Egg Recipe

Ingredients:
6 hard-boiled eggs, well chilled (i try to cook them to just past soft boiled stage, then stick them in the coldest part of the fridge to firm up)
1 pound good quality sausage meat (i used ground turkey meat, seasoned with sage, white pepper, salt and a tiny bit of maple syrup)
1/2 cup AP flour
1-2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup panko-style bread crumbs
Vegetable oil for frying

Directions:
peel eggs; divide sausage into 6 portions.
roll each egg in flour then press and shape a portion of the sausage around each egg.
dip sausage-wrapped eggs into beaten egg and roll in panko.
heat oil to 350˚F .
cook each egg for 4-5 minutes (longer if shallow frying–constantly turn the eggs around for best results) or until sausage is cooked and browned.

Can be served cold

Tailgating Recipes: Deviled Eggs for 50

I love deviled eggs plain and simple. And really the only problem with them is the look you get when you put four of them on your plate.  Turns out that it’s considered “appropriate” to leave some for others.  Hogwash!  To avoid that problem DeviledEggs.com has a recipe that should satisfy your entire tailgate.  All 50 of those drunken rebel rousers.  Of course, I can eat 50 deviled eggs by myself.

DEVILED EGG RECIPE FOR 50

1 cup Fat free Mayonnaise
5 TBSP Dijon Mustard
1 4oz Can Deviled Ham
2 Finely Chopped Scallions
2 Finely chopped Stacks of Celery
1 TSP Celery Salt (Deviled ham has salt already in it, so do not over do salt)
2 TSP Dill Weed
1 Gallon Freezer bag
Garnish:
1 can of whole Olives
5 strips of bacon cooked and crumbled
Paprika

Place eggs underneath the top of the water, bring to a boil, over Med-High heat. When the water comes to a boil, cook eggs for 10 minutes and remove from heat, but do not remove them from hot water for another 10-15 minutes (This reduces the green gray haze to the outside of the yoke). Run under cold water and peel.

Cut eggs in half lengthwise. Remove yokes, and place in Medium Bowl, and mash up with a fork. Add Celery Salt, Dill Weed, Deviled Ham, Mayonnaise, Mustard, Finely chopped Celery and Scallions Mix well and place in 1 gallon freezer bag. Cut one end of freezer bag for dispensing mixture in egg shells.

Slice Olives and place on top, sprinkle paprika, and crumbled Bacon. Refrigerate until served.

Hop Skip and Go Naked Punch Recipe

Well I’d have to say that the recipe for Hop Skip and Go Naked might just be the only manly punch I’ve ever come across. If it has beer and whiskey that’s acceptable to drink right? Seems like a good drink alternative for an early morning tailgate or a sweltering 90° afternoon in Aug/September.

Ingredients:

Six 12-oz. cans of beer
1 pint of Canadian whiskey
One 12-oz. can of frozen lemonade concentrate
2 liters of lemon-lime soda

Preparation:

1. In a gallon container add beer, whiskey and frozen lemonade (and optional lemon-lime soda).
2. Stir and serve over ice.

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

The Delightful Delicacy brings us a recipe for Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes. Hopefully you have a wife or girlfriend at your tailgate that you can convince to make these. Thanks to The Grinder for the heads up and funny commentary on Notre Dame:

“Now, obviously, the violent history of the Irish Republican Army isn’t something to joke about. I was at a college bar at Notre Dame the first time I saw a shot of Baileys and Jameson get plunked into a pint of Guinness, which was then sucked down by an Irish-studies student. At the time, I wondered if his heartbreak over the sad history of Northern Ireland was what drove him to chug that spiked pint in one gulp, but I later learned that (a) the drink will curdle if you don’t consume it quickly, and (b) that dude was totally insensitive.”

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Cupcake Ingredients:
1 cup Guiness
1 stick, plus 1 tbs unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups dark brown sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tbs vanilla extract
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking soda

Cupcake Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350; line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.
2. Combine the Guiness and the butter, chopped into 1-inch chunks, in a large sauce pan, and heat to melt the butter.
3. Remove from heat, and whisk in the cocoa and sugar.
4. In a bowl, whisk the sour cream and the eggs and vanilla, then add to the beer mixture.
5. Sift together the flour and baking soda, and fold in the batter.
6. Pour into muffin molds and bake or 25 minutes, or until inserted cake tester comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes, remove from muffin tin, and cool completely on a rack.

Frosting Ingredients:
1 stick of unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
Bailey’s Irish Cream
Jameson Irish Whiskey

Frosting Directions:
1. Put the stick of room-temperature butter in a large mixing bowl and bet at medium-to-high speed for a few minutes.
2. Add a few short glugs of Bailey’s and a tiny bit of Jameson, and mix at low speed.
3. Gradually spoon confectioners’ sugar into the bowl, mixing on low speed.

Mr. T Drink Recipe

The Mr. T is the perfect drink for when you need a change up in your alcohol during the middle of a scorching hot September tailgate. The original idea was to alleviate the jittery feeling people get after about 5 rum and cokes. Of course tea has just as much sugar and caffeine but whatever.

Ingredients:
12oz Sweet Tea
3oz Dark/Spiced Rum
ice cubes
Lime wedge

Preparation: Find a plastic solo cup and fill up the bottom indention with rum. It’s about three ounces but doesn’t require measuring. Throw in a handful of ice cubes and then fill the rest of the cup with sweet tea and garnish with a lime.

For sweet tea at the tailgate I suggest picking up a gallon of Milo’s Famous Sweet Tea. You can check their store locator to see if it’s sold in your area. If you’re not fortunate enough to grab some Milo’s, I suggest making your own tea with this recipe, but I’d actually use at least 1.5 cups of sugar if not 2. If you’re making your own sweet tea I’d recommend making a pitcher of Mr. T’s ahead of time and taking them to the tailgate in a gallon thermos.

I do not suggest using your plain old garden variety clear Bacardi Rum. I’d grab a bottle of brown rum. Preferable Bacardi Gold Rum or Captain Morgan if you’re on the cheap.