Monin Spicy Mango Chicken Wings

Monin Spicy Mango Wings. Photo courtesy of Monin.

Putting a creative twist on classic sports-watching grub is a great way to get fans as excited about the food as they are about the game, while still providing the comfort of their tried and true favorite snacks.  Give your chicken wings some flair with a sweet and spicy sauce using Monin Spicy Mango syrup.  Keep a variety of syrup flavors on hand and use your favorite to add an extra pop of flavor to your dishes.

1 cup hot wing sauce                                                              

2 tablespoons Monin® Spicy Mango Syrup

24 chicken wing/drumette pieces, cooked

Whisk together hot wing sauce and Monin Spicy Mango syrup until well combined.  Toss cooked wings with sauce mixture, drain off excess sauce, and serve.

Buttermilk Blue Cheese Dip

Game day isn’t complete without a good dip, and this buttermilk blue cheese dip is a great compliment to your wings.  Serve it up in a wide mouth, melamine dish.  Not only does this allow for easy dipping, but melamine is a break resistant alternative to glass that’s great for a busy or even rowdy environment.

Servings: Makes about 1 cup                                               

5 tablespoons red onion, finely chopped

Carlisle’s melamine dishes are great for dips or salsas. Photo courtesy of Carlisle.

¼ cup white wine vinegar                                                     

1 teaspoon sugar

Pinch of kosher salt

¼ cup buttermilk

¼ cup sour cream

2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

½ cup crumbled blue cheese

Freshly ground black pepper

Salt

Place onion in a small bowl.  Bring vinegar, sugar, salt, and ¼ cup water to a bowl.  Pour over onion and stir.  Cover and let pickle in the refrigerator for 1 hour or more.  Whisk together buttermilk, sour cream, and chives until smooth.  Stir in blue cheese.  Drain pickled onion and stir into dip.   Add salt and pepper to taste.

Ginger Beer Margaritas

Football beverages don’t have to just mean cheap beer.  Stand out from the crowd by offering Ginger Beer Margaritas!  After all, margaritas and football are a great pairing already, if not partially for the fact that they are easy to mix up in batches if need be.  Make sure to have plenty of pitchers on hand or try serving them in a fun glass to make an extra festive experience for your guests. Libbey’s football tumblers are a great option.

Libbey football tumblers are a fun option for football season.

1.5 ounces tequila

1 ounce fresh lime juice

3 ounces Cock ‘n Bull Ginger Beer

.5 ounce simple syrup

Salt for rim

Line rim of glass with fresh lime juice and dip in salt.  Add tequila, simple syrup, ginger beer and lime juice to cocktail shaker with ice and stir (do not shake or ginger beer will fizz up).  Pour liquid into glass with ice and garnish with a lime wedge.  Double, triple, etc. amounts for larger batches.

As long as you are prepared with plenty of beverage and dining room supplies, and a variety of creative favorites on the menu, you are sure to keep the crowds happily cheering on their teams.  Enjoy football season!

The post Football Season: Food Service Necessities & Recipes appeared first on Houston's Blog.

We began to see the early signs of our current wing shortage as early as January 2014, when the cost of chicken feed began to drop, but the price of chicken stayed high due to a lack of production. Over the following spring and summer, chicken prices continued to climb despite feed costs remaining low. While chicken production in the forth quarter of 2014 was up, many industry analysts predict chicken prices won’t begin to decline until March 2015; this of course being less than ideal timing as we approach Super Bowl weekend, less than two weeks away.

Over the course of the last year, restaurants across the nation have been testing ways of working around the increased prices of wings. Restaurant owners are responding in one of three ways: increase the price of the wings and continue selling specific quantities, sell wings by the pound rather than a specific count, or present customers with alternative menu offerings. Andy Weiderhorn, Buffalo’s Café CEO, points out that this decision should be based on the surrounding market, since some customers order specific quantities with the notion of splitting the meal, while others aren’t concerned whether they order by quantity or by the pound.

Selling wings by the pound may offer the restaurant more peace of mind. Buffalo Wild Wings tested this tactic in their markets, and it proved to smooth out the volatility in their quarterly earnings. Rather than providing additional profit, this strategy may provide more consistency. Selling wings in specific quantities will result in some quarters with a fewer wings per pound, while selling by the pound means consistency in that the restaurant is selling the wings in the same manner in which they were bought.

Another added expense to keep in mind is transportation and delivery costs. Chicken wings will cost more on the coastlines because the majority of the chicken farming is done inland, in the mid-west for example, and shipping the chickens out to the coast lines takes time, money and resources; though the recent decrease in fuel prices should help to ease transportation costs.

Many restaurants are looking to other options and limiting the impact of the chicken wing shortage on their establishment(s). While Americans consumed over 1.2 million wing portions during the Super Bowl in 2014, there are a host of other popular snack offering available to restaurants as well:

Super Bowl Sunday is the busiest day of the year for pizza restaurants who, on average, will sell twice as many pizzas as they would on any other day of the year, according to the National Restaurant Association.

• Super Bowl weekend is the most popular grilling weekend of the year, second to only Forth of the July, when approximately 14 billion hamburgers will be made.

• More than 11 million pounds of potato chips, 4 million pounds of pretzels, and 2 million pounds of nuts will be consumed on this one day. Anyone care to guess how much salt is consumed?

• For those who like a little avocado on their burger, or guacamole with their chips, nearly 70 million pounds of the super food are consumed during the Super Bowl alone.

• For a lighter, possibly healthier option, get to popping – the popcorn that is. Americans will east more than 3.5 million pounds of popcorn during the game, and for those who skip the butter, this is one of the healthiest snacks of the day.

• Obviously nothing pairs better with football than beer, and that could be indicated by the almost 50 million cases sold on the day of the Super Bowl alone.

Other obvious menu selections will include offerings such as nachos, meatballs, macaroni salad, potato salad, hot dogs and brats. No wonder antacid sales typically increase 20% the day after the Super Bowl.

What’s on your Super Bowl menu? Are you going with traditional finger foods (like chicken wings), or experimenting with something different this year?

The post A Super Bowl without Chicken Wings? Say it isn’t so! appeared first on Houston's Blog.