March 2009

THE MORNING AFTER…..

 

I think the biggest thing that sets NASCAR tailgaters apart from the rest is that we tailgate for days rather than hours. For most tailgaters, you cook and party before the big game, pack everything back up, go and watch your event, and then you go home. For us NASCAR fans, we cook and party before the race, go in and watch the race, and then instead of going home, we make it back to our trailers and continue to party until the wee hours of the morning. If we are lucky, we catch a few hours of sleep and then get up and do it all over again. We do this for days at a time, depending on how many races there are on that particular weekend. This means that we have one extra meal per day that most tailgaters don’t have to think about and that is breakfast!

 

The first morning I am usually still in the mood to make a big breakfast buffet. We do things like eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, etc. By the second day however, I am not as enthusiastic about dragging myself out of bed to spend an hour or more making a meal let alone cleaning up after it. By that second morning, my first thought is…how does my head feel then my second thought is….where are the Bloody Mary’s?  Once I am vertical with refreshment in hand is when I can get started on the next order of business…….what are we going to eat? Over the years we have tried many different things but I am going to share the two easiest ones. (and a Bloody Mary recipe of course!)

 

The first one is Posole. Many people have strange ideas about this dish. In fact, it is like a breakfast chili. It is a fabulous dish to eat, especially when you are having a ‘tough’ morning. Mine is made with some basic ingredients like shredded or cubed pork, hominy, tomatoes, broth and spices. It is also great with warm tortillas. The longer it cooks, the better it gets but there is a catch 22. It tastes best when it is hot and fresh after cooking slowly for 6 to 8 hours. This can be tricky when camping/tailgating. I actually have a propane fueled crock pot which makes it a breeze. Before this however, we would use a ‘cooler crock pot’. We discovered this by complete accident on one trip. I had made a pot of Posole one evening and it was still too hot to put into the RV fridge so we had to come up with some place to put it. We had an extra cooler, one of the ones that keeps ice for 5 days. After a day of eating, drinking and being merry, I had an idea…..If the cooler will keep food cold for 5 days, wouldn’t it keep something hot overnight? I got a bunch of extra towels and a small blanket that we had in the RV. I lined the bottom of the cooler with a couple of the towels and made sure they came up the sides. I then put the Posole on the stove and brought it to a slow boil. I let it boil and stirred in constantly for about 10 minutes until I was sure that the food was hot all of the way through. I took if off the burner, covered it with a tight fitting lid and set it into the cooler. I then topped it with the blanket and closed the cooler lid tightly. We left the cooler in the RV over night (because it was cold outside). When we woke up I opened the cooler and the blanket and towels were still warm. When I took the pot out and took off the lid, there was still some steam coming off. I had a meat thermometer so I tested it and it was about 160 degrees. The sauce was thick and the meat was tender just like when I make it at home and put it in the crock pot overnight. 

 

Before you try this, I must caution you about a few things. The first one is keep in mind that for crock pot cooking, 140 degrees is the lowest temperature recommended. They say when cooking in a conventional crock pot the temperature needs to reach the 140 degree mark as quickly as possible. The low setting on a crock pot is about 200 degrees and the high level is about 300 degrees. The difference here (in my opinion) is that I was not putting cool raw meat into a 140 to 160 degree atmosphere and letting it stay there, I was taking a pot of boiling stew with cooked meat and letting it simmer or stew down to the 160 degree mark. Some say that the temperature of simmer is as low as 130 degrees and some say it is as high as 180 degrees.   Either way, I felt the food stayed at a safe temperature all night long and would be safe to eat.  Always test the temperature of your food in the morning to ensure it has stayed hot enough to be safe to eat. 

 

The second thing is to make sure that you have a good quality cooler and plenty of towels and/or blankets to insulate the cooler and the food. You do not want the hot pan to get anywhere close to the plastic insides of your cooler or it will melt it. There needs to be at least a few layers between the walls and the pot. Also make sure that the pot has a secure, tight fitting lid and that you cover it completely with a towel or blanket. Make sure there are towels around the sides as well. You want the pan snuggled into the towels and for there to be no air pockets in the cooler which will help to reduce the temperature. They also sell insulated blankets that hikers and campers use that would probably work great if you make this type of cooking a habit. Also make sure the cooler lid is tightly closed to keep the heat from escaping.

 

The third thing is to make sure that the stew is hot all the way through before you put it in the cooler. Don’t just bring it to a quick boil, but cook it for about 10 minutes while stirring to make sure it is hot all the way through. This will help to keep the temperature up during the night. Also keep in mind that you can use this method during the day just like you would at home to cook chili, beef stew or any other type of fully cooked meal that just needs to tenderize for 6 or 8 hours. 

Another recipe I am going to share is for the Boil-in-Bag ‘Morning After’ Scrambled Eggs. This is another easy one that really has no dishes, very little prep, and practically no clean up. All you need to prepare these are a Sharpie marker, freezer bags, a pan of boiling water, and the ingredients. The great part of this dish is everyone can have their eggs their way, you can cook them at once and there are no dishes to wash. You can even use the boiling water to wash any dishes left over from the night before. This is another method of cooking that comes with a little controversy. Some people freak out about boiling a resealable bag. Some say it will melt, some say toxins are released into the food, blah blah blah! I look at it this way. Any toxins that I get from these eggs in the one time I make them every 6 months or so is not going to kill me. I mean I spend at least two weeks a year at a race track in the pits inhaling race fuel fumes, second hand smoke from campfires, microwaved food, cell phone radiation etc., (oh yeah, and the Bloody Mary’s and wine) and all of the other things they say are dangerous. I will take my chances with these eggs while swilling a Bloody Mary and be just fine with it. I have made these and the only time I had bag meltage was when the bag touched the edge of the pan for about 5 minutes. Other than that, I have had no problems with this method. For a standard size dutch oven and the quart size bags, you can usually cook 5 maybe 6 bags at a time.

 

A couple of suggestions for this method are as follows…..

 

First, make sure you are using freezer bags, not just regular bags. They are thicker and hold up better in the hot water. I have found that the quart size works fine, but you can use the gallon size if that is what you have on hand. I am also one who is all for saving money by using generics, but I would suggest sticking with Ziplock or Glad in this case. They seem to hold up a little better.

 

Second, I only bring and keep the water at a slow boil. You just want the rolling bubbles, not the crazy water that is splattering everyone within a 50 foot radius. I also try to stir them around in the water so they don’t just sit in the same place during the entire cooking time. Try not to let the bags sit on the bottom of the pan. The water is hot, but the metal bottom of the pan that is sitting directly on the heat source is much hotter. If you prefer you can ‘hang’ the bags in the water. To do this you will need some wooden clothes pins and some bamboo skewers. Fold the bag over the skewer so that it is submerged into the water but not touching the bottom. Secure the bag to the skewer with the clothes pin. During the last minute or two, remove the bags from the skewers and let them float in the water. This will cook any of the raw egg that might have been pushed up the sides of the bag while filling the bags or during mushing.

 

Cook the eggs in the bags, serve on paper plates with plastic forks and viola! you have no dishes. What can be better than that at the beginning of an eventful day?  Another nice thing is for some of the ingredients, you can use the leftover meat from the day before…..steak, hot dogs, hamburger, peppers and onions, whatever you have around. This also helps to keep the shopping, costs and prep to a minimum as well.

 

Last but not least, we have the Bloody Mary’s. Most people know that I am pretty much a wine drinker. I do however, have a mental about pouring myself a glass at 9am while we are camping. Bloody Mary’s are much more socially acceptable and if you can’t beat them, join them. Everyone has a favorite Bloody Mary recipe and I am no exception. I like to use Pickapeppa sauce. If you can’t find that you can substitute steak sauce. Another thing that I adore in mine is Limoncello. That is an italian lemon liquer. It is slightly sweet but has a strong lemon taste. If you prefer not to use that you can substitue lemon juice with a pinch of sugar instead. I also love to marinate my olives and tomato skewers in vodka the night before. Talk about an eye opener…….

 

I hope you enjoy the above ideas and don’t’ forget that breakfast is the most important meal of the day!!!!