A Real Football Feast for Fans

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…football season!!! Couch potatoes and athletes alike have been looking forward to kickoff since the clock hit 0:00 in the Super Bowl.  One of the best things about football season is the food, so I have brought you three simple appetizers that will surely please you and your guests while watching the big game.

Ingredients

Mango Barbeque Meatballs

2 cups ketchup

1 cup apple cider vinegar

2/3 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

2 tsp salt

½ tbsp celery salt

½ tbsp cumin

¾ tbsp garlic powder

¼ tbsp chili powder

2 tsp cayenne pepper

½ tsp liquid smoke, hickory

¼ tsp lemon juice

6 oz mango jam

1 lb mrozen meatballs

Grilled Corn

2 ears of corn, enough for 8 mini corn-on-the-cobs

2 tbsp butter or margarine, softened

Salt and pepper, to taste

Steak Bites

2 steaks, I used ribeyes

Montreal steak seasoning, to taste

Process

Mango Barbeque Meatballs

For the sauce, combine all ingredients except Mango jam and meatballs in a saucepan and simmer for 30 minutes.  Place in the refrigerator for at least two hours, preferably overnight.

In a slow cooker, mix the barbeque sauce, mango jam, and meatballs together and cook for an hour and a half to two hours on high heat, stirring every once in a while. Serve hot.

Grilled Corn

Peel back the husks but don’t fully remove. Spread butter over the corn. Sprinkle the pepper onto the corn and pull the husks back over the corn. Grill off the flame for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle salt to taste before serving.

Steak Bites

Sprinkle the seasoning onto the steak. Grill to preferred temperature. Cut into ¾ inch squares. Serve hot.

Taste Test

The meatballs are heavenly. The barbeque sauce is initially quite spicy but the mango jam evens it out. The jam also adds a great layer to the already complex flavor of the sauce. There aren’t many foods that are spectacular out of a bag but meatballs are usually one of them; the ones I used were Publix Homestyle and they were fantastic.

I love grilled corn. Being able to put the butter on before makes the kernels very juicy and delicious. I like to dip the corn in some of the mango barbeque sauce, but I like dipping everything in sauce.

Much like the corn, the steak bites were delicious when dipped in the mango barbeque sauce. However, they were delicious on their own as well. Cooking the steaks whole allows them to stay juicier than if they were cut up beforehand.  

Leftover quality

The meatballs were fantastic the day after cooking them. The steak bites were good but the texture wasn’t quite the same. The corn was tasty but, like the steak, the texture wasn’t quite the same.