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Best Chili for your Tailgate Party

cheftodd — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:54:40 +0000

It takes a long time to cook chili and develop the flavor to make it the best chili. So, the best chili for your tailgate party must be made ahead of time, in the kitchen and kept warm through game time. I shared my brick-solid secret for keeping foods warm earlier this week. Now, I want to share a few ideas on WHAT we're keeping warm, my favorite chili recipe. Your expression of chili shouldn't have a recipe. Your best chili should be the chili recipe that comes from your imagination and favorite combination of ingredients. It's a fantastic opportunity to use basic cooking methods and create something that has no rules. I advise people who want to learn to cook to start with something like soup, stew, or chili. This is where there's great freedom to explore different ingredients while using basic cooking methods. A great chili recipe starts like a saute procedure, with a hot pan and some fat to conduct the heat. The protein product you choose doesn't have to be ground beef. In today's video, I create a filet mignon chili, using the scraps from a whole tenderloin we cleaned in a previous lesson at WebCookingClasses. Rather than beef, you can choose chicken, turkey, roasted vegetables, even shrimp or lobster chili. The best savory flavors in chili are combined during the initial saute. Here's where the rendered fat from your protein product combines with the onions, garlic, peppers, or dried herbs you choose. A deglazing liquid is needed then needed to add texture, only to evaporate most of it, leaving its flavors behind. Your chili recipe is now ready for a long, low, and slow simmer to tenderize, reduce, and combine flavors. Here's the time to let your chili breathe. Don't cover your chili pot unless you want to steam rather than reduce. To bean or not to bean? You can debate whether the best chili recipe contains beans or not. This divides all people in their expression of a personal best chili. The important part is to learn to cook with basic methods and instill your personal desires to make the best chili recipe you've ever had. Yesterday's post from the parking lot: Beer Shrimp Scampi Previously: Football Food for Your Tailgate Party When you BBQ Grill, are you using the Great Male Excuse? (Burned outdoors is no better than burned indoors) “Burn Your Recipes” and Cook Like a Chef at Home with my cooking DVDs!
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Beer Shrimp Scampi for Football Food

cheftodd — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:00:29 +0000

My top secret for keeping your tailgate party food hot was revealed yesterday, but today I want to cook my football food right in the parking lot. With a portable camper saute burner rather than a small charcoal grill, I'll demonstrate how to cook Beer Shrimp Scampi saute from Carter/Finley Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina.

If you've been following my videos over the past two years, you know how I feel about outdoor grilling. It's the great male excuse. If you're trying to learn to cook, 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's charred black, it's "nicely blackened". Burnt is burnt, indoors or out. I don't know why men think it's easier to cook outdoors than indoors. I believe the exact opposite.

If the outdoor barbeque grill you have at home is for natural charcoal, it's the most difficult heat in your house to apply consistently. If your grill is propane gas, it's hard to learn how to barbeque grill because it's probably the hottest element you have in your home.

Since controlling heat is the key to cooking, the barbeque grill is the most volatile cooking element you have at your disposal. You can compound this cooking challenge by trying to use a portable barbeque grill. The smaller grills are even harder to control, and more difficult to get even heat.

The most reliable source of heat will be direct, conductive heat as applied in basic saute. Bringing a portable camper stove and saute pan to your next tailgate party gives much greater variety in cooking. 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.

I'd rather saute any day. 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.

“Burn Your Recipes” and Cook Like a Chef at Home with my cooking DVDs!

The Complete cooking DVDcollection for cooking without recipes.

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Football Food for your Tailgate Party

cheftodd — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:08:39 +0000

Planning football food for your tailgate party can mean bringing your tailgate recipes with you, or creating them at home. If you choose to bring food, I've got the secrets to keeping your football food hot until the game starts. My first secret to successful tailgate food is to always bring two coolers to my tailgate party. One is a cold cooler to keep my ingredients for on-site cooking below the temperature danger zone of 40f - 140f (6c - 60c). This way, when I choose to make a saute of shrimp scampi tomorrow, all my ingredients will be fresh and safe. The second cooler I bring is the hot cooler. The hot cooler is filled with the football food items that I've made at home, but am bringing to the tailgate party. Again, the challenge is to keep these hot items ABOVE the same temperature danger zone mentioned above. How do you keep items in a hot cooler as hot as possible? You can't have an open flame or charcoal in a plastic cooler. I'm going to share my #1 caterer's secret for keeping food hot on-the-go with you, and it involves something that you look at every day. This household item will put out heat for hours if you prepare it correctly. Today's video will explain. Throw a tailgate party before your favorite game and you have two choices: prepare food at the game, or bring it with you. If you decide to prepare your football food before the game, you'll want to assure the tailgate food stays safe and hot until game time. If you choose to cook at the game, tomorrow's video will give you a new idea for football food at your tailgate party. Cook like a chef at home in 16 weeks, guaranteed with my online cooking classes.

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