Okay, first things first. I do happen to know the Superbowl is over. And I apologize for not posting any foods prior to the Superbowl, for those looking for ideas.

But I did fix some stuff, and I had some thoughts on Superbowl foods. Here are my thoughts:

Food should never be fixed for the Superbowl if someome could categorize it as ‘gourmet’. That’s it. Everything else is fair game.

‘Gourmet’ foods don’t mix with the NFL. Fatties and pulled pork and wings and ribs fit pretty well. I can’t imagine a bunch of people sitting around watching the game while eating foie gras with blackberry balsamic glaze, or fish eggs on toast (sorry, caviar on toast points, forgive me!). Football food is meant to be stuff that you can chomp on and enjoy without having to pay too much attention to etiquette. Fancy foods have their time and place; half time at the Superbowl isn’t one of them!

So I kept it simple… Smofried wings and ABTs.

Smofried wings are named backwards… They’re fried, then smoked, not the other way around, but Frysmoked sounds like a grease fire about to start. I got a deepfryer at the Frontgate outlet (that’s the Frontgate from Skymall, the catalog we’ve all read while bored to tears on a flight somewhere). It’s a nice electrice fryer with electronic temp control and good features. In the clearance area at the outlet, this cost me $20. Sure, the lid doesn’t quite fit right, but it still works to keep things from getting too splattered.

First thing I did for the wings was to divide up a package into wing parts. There are 3 parts: the drum, the tip (gets thrown out), and the middle part. I know, I know… these technical anatomy terms are a bit much. The dividing of the whole into it’s 3 parts is simple with a sharp knife. I just pull the drum out a bit, cut down the middle of the angle, and I have a separated drum. I do the same to the tip, and then I have the 2 parts I want and the tip to throw away.

The reason these wings are smofried is because smoking means the skin will be tough and chewy. Frying the wings first makes sure the skin can be bitten through easily. The smoking part is just for flavor, and it adds plenty. It also allows the fat to drain a bit.

Once the fryer reaches temp, I put the wings in for 5 minutes, just long enough to cook the skin. They’re removed and allowed to drain for a couple of minutes. Then I put the wings in a pan with sauce and into the smoker for about 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the wings are at 165 degrees F. The sauces I really love on my wings are from Nando’s Peri-Peri. I tried both the Wild Herb and the Garlic versions, and both delivered great flavor. Using the BW3 sauce my wife likes, Spicy Garlic, I also did a pan of wings with just the middle part, as my wife prefers that part of the wing.

The resultant wing parts are great. A coworker remarked that the sauce isn’t where the flavor comes from; it’s from the smoke. Take that, BW3!

For the ABTs, I just did a couple basic varieties, and I used a zucchini tool I found a few weeks ago to core the peppers.

After hollowing out and scraping the hottest part of some jalapeno and Fresno peppers, they got stuffed and smoked. I put cream cheese in the japs and rolled up proscuiotto, basil and Italian cheese in the Fresno peppers. The peppers took about an hour, and they’re done when the peppers are softened a bit.

Nothing gourmet. Just good smashmouth football food for a good smashmouth football game. And I’m going on record saying that I’m glad to see Eli Manning get MVP a year after his brother did.

I’ll admitit; I did have a cookie after all was said and done.