A quality Super Bowl viewing experience demands a delicious food (and drink) experience as well. Any serious spread covers a lot of ground, but without too much fuss—you’ve got your substantial food, your lighter touch, your mandatory wings, your beverages, and maybe something a little sweet to finish things off. This deep dive into our culinary archives features a little something of everything needed to create an unforgettable afternoon of football (and eating, and drinking…)
Something Substantial
If the beef goulash and sour cream dumplings of chef Ryan Stechschulte are good enough for the Minnesota Wild, they’re good enough for your hungry (hopefully exceedingly hungry) guests. This is a meal that keeps and reheats well, and it scales up, too—you can take care of it in the days before the big game and bring it back to life for your guests without too much trouble.
Something Chicken Wings
Yakitori-style wings by Matti Sprague // Photo by Wing Ta
If you want to bring some serious culinary firepower to the table, this recipe for yakitori-style wings with chile maple tebasaki and homemade hot sauce by Alma chef de cuisine Matti Sprague will fire things up on an ambitious note.
But if you want to go basic, I’ve workshopped a broiler-based old-school Buffalo chicken wing recipe that is easier than pie and roughly as delicious—see below. These 24-minute wings have few ingredients, require no deep-frying, and finish with a crispy, tender, beautifully rendered texture and flavor that will win friends and influence people.
Something Light
Beth Dooley’s easy to make broccoli salad recipe // Photo by Mette Nielsen
This broccoli salad with peanuts and cranberries from author Beth Dooley is light enough to cut through some of the cream, meat, and sugar of this spread’s other dishes, but it’s no killjoy. Tart sweetness from craisins and creamy depth from good mayonnaise, cumin, and coriander lend it a serious fun factor.
Something Hoppy
Photo by Kevin Kramer
We live in a state that is teeming with remarkably good breweries and deliciously good beers, so it’s not too much of a challenge to find something from the neighborhood to drink. That said: we can offer recommendations for local standouts of our blind taste test of 53 IPAs, 49 hazy IPAs, and 25 Pilsners.
Something NA
Non-alcoholic gimlet made with black tea // Photo by Tj Turner
Not everyone drinks, and some of us are even trying to moderate our intake a bit, particularly after the rowdiness of the holiday season. Last year The Growler published a tea gimlet recipe from Erik Eastman that has become a favorite—to paraphrase Eastman, it tastes complex without being complicated.
And if it’s gotta be (non-alcoholic) beer, the Growler’s team recently tasted through 31 non-alcoholic beers to find the serious standouts—we’ve got the results right here.
Something Sweet
Want to make a lasting impression on your guests? Whip-up some homemade cannoli, which can be created before the party starts and then filled to order, ala this recipe from Due Focacceria’s Eric Carrara.
And our fast fast fast (and deliciously deep) pumpkin pie recipe is a desert worthy of sharing at any family gathering, football included.
24-Minute Wings Recipe
By James Norton
Costco sells piles of chicken wings for a reasonable price, and we love Buffalo wings. Online recipes for these things get incredibly arcane—coatings, frying directions, exquisitely compounded spice loads, etc. What we presupposed is: What if wings were quick and easy? The following recipe is delicious and also quite simple to execute.
Ingredients
1½ pounds of chicken wings
¼ cup of good butter (Rochdale, etc.), melted
½ cup of Frank’s Red Hot
Salt, pepper, any decent BBQ rub
Celery (optional)
Ranch or bleu cheese dressing (optional)
Directions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Put all of your wings on a grid over a foil-lined pan. Sprinkle them lightly with salt, pepper, and barbecue rub. Flip the wings over and repeat.
Bake wings for 8 minutes, then flip, and bake for another 8 minutes. Bring oven up to broil, and broil for 4–8 minutes, checking every two minutes for doneness—they should have some blackened spots, but not be burning / black overall.
Whisk together melted butter and Frank’s Red Hot in a large mixing bowl, and then toss wings with it, reserving a little Buffalo sauce if you’d like. Serve with celery, ranch or bleu cheese dressing, and reserved sauce.
