What to make for the Super Bowl this Sunday - The Boston Globe (2024)

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Sheryl Julian writes that “a baker friend taught me to grate frozen butter for biscuits and pie crusts, which spreads the fat throughout the dough so you never have to cut it in. That’s the way many southern cooks make ham biscuits using self-rising flour. After baking, the rounds are filled with ham. These, made with all-purpose flour, leavening, and buttermilk, are sandwiched with smoked turkey and arugula, and spread with mustard-mayo, so you get smoky, sweet, spicy, and buttery tastes.” But make sure you make your biscuits big enough, Julian warns, or “they’ll look like they belong on a tea party tray instead of a Super Bowl spread.”

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The Globe food team recently launched a Winter Soup Club (if you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so here), and this week’s newsletter, which landed in inboxes Thursday, features Sheryl Julian’s turkey chili. This earlier version of her recipe is very similar. “The seasonings vary, as do the beans and sausage, but the meat in my favorite chili is always ground dark-meat turkey (white meat dries out in the pot). This version has red and green bell peppers, along with a mild chile pepper, chile powder, cumin, oregano, turkey kielbasa or another turkey sausage, red and white beans. It should sit for a day for the flavors to mellow,” Julian writes.

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About her chopped salad with blue cheese dressing, Julian writes: “You need one healthy snack on the Super Bowl table. Might as well be this.” I agree. This chopped salad doesn’t get mushy easily. And you’ll learn how to make a simple homemade blue cheese dressing, too. “Top the tossed salad with crumbled bacon, so the dish has elements of a wedge salad, but lots of crunch and loads of flavor.”

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These taco bites from Sally Pasley Vargas are cute and tasty. “Made in a muffin tin, the taco cups have corn tortillas as the base with a filling of black beans, plenty of cheese, and spicy ground chicken, turkey, or beef. To make the cups, square off corn tortillas by cutting off the round edges. You will need to warm them slightly to make them flexible; a microwave is the fastest route to do this or wrap them in foil and heat them in a low oven. Then press them into muffin cups and bake them for a few minutes to firm them up. The meat filling, with chunky salsa and canned beans, takes only a few minutes to prep. After the cups are shaped, fill them, bake again, and top with avocado and sour cream.”

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Sally Pasley Vargas gives us these pizza rolls made in a cast-iron skillet. “No big skillet? Divide the rolls into 2 cake pans, or set them in a rectangular baking pan. Use a ball of pizza dough from the supermarket and cut it in half so rolling is easier to manage. The weight of prepared dough varies from 16 to 28 ounces; use what you can find, preferably 22 ounces or more. Don’t worry too much about the exact weight, just go with the flow on this one, adjusting the filling to fit your dough. Spread it with prepared tomato sauce, grated cheese, thin slices of pepperoni, and a nugget of string cheese that ends up in the middle. Before baking, sprinkle everything with Parmesan. Long after the game is over, your family is going to be begging for these little rolls, and they couldn’t be easier.”

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This one comes from Sheryl Julian: “Wildly popular cheese wafers are savory rounds that many Southern cooks make for all occasions. Almost every recipe is the same — grated sharp cheese (I like cheddar here), butter, flour, salt, and a generous pinch of cayenne pepper. The wafers have no leavening, and no eggs or sugar. This version is from a 1950 spiral-bound book called “Charleston Receipts,” where it appeared in the “canapes” section, along with recipes for cheese balls, shrimp paste, and benne (sesame) seed “co*cktailers,” a kind of biscuit. In this updated method for cheese wafers, you make the dough in a food processor, turn big clumps onto a sheet of plastic wrap, and with your hands, shape a compact log. Then fold over the plastic wrap and press a ruler against one long side of the wrap to form a tight roll.”

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From Jill Gibson: “A bar food staple since the 1980s, potato skins have remained popular for their simple but classic pairing of crispy potato and melted cheese. For the Super Bowl, they’re a perfect addition to the snack buffet. To get extra-crisp skins, bake large russet potatoes, scoop out the flesh (turn it into potato pancakes the next day), brush the insides with butter, sprinkle with salt, and bake the empty skins a second time. Fill them with browned kielbasa and Gruyere, or another cheese you like, and broil them briefly to melt the cheese and crisp the top edges yet again. Sour cream and chives finish the dish. Bake the whole potatoes in advance, if you like, but wait to halve them until you’re ready to bake the scooped-out skins. Don’t skip the sour cream; it adds an essential tang.”

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From Karoline Boehm Goodnick: “Baked and breaded chicken tenders taste a lot like the deep-fried version. These stay juicy in the heat of the oven from a quick brine (up to two hours is sufficient; don’t let them sit overnight because the vinegar in the brine will start to pickle the tenders). While they bake, make a yogurt dipping sauce with canned chipotle peppers, which shine here. Chop them with whatever sauce clings to the pepper as you pull it from the can. Save the rest of the peppers to add to chili, beef stew, or a chicken casserole.”

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This recipe from Sally Pasley Vargas makes for a good weeknight dinner or a good game-day snack. “Toss drumsticks in a honey-sweetened marinade of lime, miso, ginger, and soy sauce. Spread the drumsticks on one half of a sheet pan and place some broccolini on the other half. The broccolini cook faster than the chicken, so remove it when it’s done and return the chicken, freshly painted with glaze, to the oven for another 10 minutes. Kids will love these drumsticks, and so will the grown-ups. As for the cook, the prep and clean-up is a breeze.”

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Looking for something a little healthier and meatless? Try these vegetable chips from Karoline Boehm Goodnick: “Vegetable chips are quite popular right now as a healthier alternative to processed snack foods. Make your own and you can even help with the issue of food waste. British author Kate Turner of ‘My Zero-Waste Kitchen’ jumped on the trend (she calls them crisps, as everyone in the UK does). The chips use up produce scraps such as potato and beet skins that would ordinarily be discarded or headed for the compost pile. Kale chips aren’t new but as long as you’re baking, add some kale leaves to the project. They’re the easiest vegetable chips and cook fairly quickly. Beets here are baked unpeeled, sliced very thin in order to crisp in the oven. Use a mandoline to make 1/16-inch slices. Sprinkle them with salt and let them sit for at least 15 minutes to release excess liquid; squeeze them out, pat them dry on paper towels, then spread them on parchment-lined baking sheets in a single layer to bake. You may want to wear gloves so your hands aren’t dyed red (it’s temporary). Bake russet potato skins — use the flesh to make a mash — with a sprinkle of olive oil, salt, and pepper. You can also add chile powder, paprika, and cumin for a bit of spice. The recipe doubles and triples easily, but the biggest factor is time and oven space. If you have only two oven racks and two baking sheets, you’ll have to juggle, rotating the baking sheets in and out as they are ready for another batch. You’ll be amazed how much kids like the chips and how quickly they disappear.”

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And if you agree that every Super Bowl party needs at least one dip, here’s a really good one. Sally Pasley Vargas says: “Similar to pimiento dip (often called the caviar of the South), this peppadew dip should be called ‘I-can’t-stop-eating-this.’ On Super Bowl Sunday, just give in. If it makes you feel better, surround the bowl with vegetables. Peppadews are mild, sweet, grape-size red peppers pickled in brine, a South African specialty, on shelves in jars or by the pound at specialty markets. They are mixed with sharp cheddar, cream cheese, mayonnaise, and cayenne pepper to make a creamy, lightly spicy dip.”

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Chris Morris can be reached at christine.morris@globe.com. Follow her @morrisglobe.