Take food sides on Super Bowl Sunday
Whether you cheer for the Denver Broncos or the Carolina Panthers on Sunday may determine whether you eat Denver green chili or North Carolina barbecue that day.
Chef Anthony Meidenbauer, executive chef of Block 16 Hospitality, isn't taking sides, but he's letting customers do just that this week at the company's Holsteins Shakes and Buns at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
On Monday, Holsteins started serving the Bronco Burger, a patty of Colorado lamb topped with fire-roasted green chilies, Swiss cheese and tomato-cumin aioli, and the Carolina BBQ Burger, which is topped with Carolina-style pulled pork, vinegar slaw and crispy onion straws. They give customers the chance to vote for one or the other by ordering and report the current totals on their social-media sites during the week.
Whether the fact that the Bronco Burger is $1 more — $19, versus $18 for the Carolina BBQ Burger — will affect the outcome remains to be seen, but Meidenbauer concedes that he took a few liberties with the traditional formulas for the two dishes.
"The Colorado one was a bit more challenging," Meidenbauer said. "When you think of iconic Denver foods, the very first thing that pops into mind is Rocky Mountain oysters," which are the testicles of a bull, peeled, sliced or pounded and battered and fried, although sometimes the testicles of a sheep or pig are used.
"I didn't think I wanted to go down that route," he said.
Denver's also known for the Denver omelet, of course, and Denver green chili, which is usually made with pork. Meidenbauer swapped out the pork for another iconic food from the state.
"Colorado lamb is the best lamb in the country, if not the world," he said, and decided to top the lamb with roasted green chilies, "just doing a kind of play on that."
The Panther Burger required a little less creativity.
"Carolina is known for Carolina-style barbecue, so that's a no-brainer," he said.
Doug Bell, executive chef of Pot Liquor C.A.S. in Town Square, explained that even within the state of North Carolina, there are differences in the way barbecue is created. In the east, he noted, it's whole hog, chopped up, with a vinegar-based sauce. In the more central Piedmont area, it's smoked pork butt, also chopped up, and the sauce is a little different.
"It's a tomato-based sauce, something that most people think of as barbecue, with that traditional tangy, sweet sauce. In eastern Carolina, it's vinegar with chili pepper and some other things."
He serves it at the restaurant.
"We call it Carolina pulled pork," Bell said. "Ours is kind of a blend of the two."He said they smoke whole hogs, but only for special events; on a daily basis they use pork butts or shoulder.
"We pull it with a little bit of traditional barbecue sauce and some of the traditional vinegar-based Carolina barbecue sauce and then serve it with more of the vinegar-based sauce," he said.
Having lived in the Denver area for about eight years, Craig Taylor, executive chef at Treasure Island, knows a thing or two about Denver green chili.
"I started making my version of it in about '79," Taylor said. "I've been making it since" and once won a chili cookoff with his recipe.
He also serves it to the public, at the resort's Gilley's BBQ.
"People who are from the Southwest know what it is," he said. "People who aren't from the Southwest want to try it and see what it's like."
Taylor has always used a very traditional recipe, based on chunks of pork. In the past week, he switched that to a version with ground turkey.
"It's a little healthier, a little sweeter," Taylor said. He said he sometimes still makes the pork version at home, but leans toward the turkey "because I'm getting old" and it's lower in fat.
Meidenbauer said he's been dreaming up Super Bowl-themed burgers for Holsteins for a few years. And just like the rest of the fans, when the playoffs got down to the final four teams, he was sweating it a bit — especially after the Denver win.
"It was definitely challenging, once I knew the four teams that were playing," he said. "I was super-happy that the other team wasn't Arizona, because they're both green chili.
"I have the New England burger in my back pocket, because they won so many times." In case you wonder, that's Maine lobster with frisee and lemon aioli, plus the burger.
The first year, he said, he did a Seahawks burger, made with seafood and with Skittles on the plate because running back Marshawn Lynch was known to be a fan of the colorful candies.
"That one won, and that was the year they won, so that was kind of cool," he said. "Last year, the Patriot Burger won," just like the team.
Why does he do it?
"Because it's fun," Meidenbauer said. "Holsteins is a fun restaurant, and we want to keep it fun and lighthearted."
DENVER POST GREEN CHILI
1 pound diced pork
¼ cup cooking oil
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1½ tablespoons dark chili powder
1½ tablespoons dried oregano
1 tablespoon garlic powder or 2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 medium onion, diced
3 cans (10 ounces each) chicken broth
1 can (32 ounces) whole tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3-4 fresh roasted green chilies or 1 can (8 ounces) diced green chilies
3-5 jalapeno peppers, diced with seeds (remove seeds to bring down the heat factor)
Tortillas
Shredded cheese
Brown pork on all sides in oil over medium-high heat. Add cumin, chili powder, oregano, garlic powder, onion and broth.
Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, 1 hour. Crush tomatoes with potato masher in another pan. To tomatoes and their juice, add tomato paste, green chilies and jalapenos. Combine tomato and pork mixtures.
Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer 2 hours (or place in a slow cooker for as long as 8 hours), until pork is very tender. Serve with warm tortillas and shredded cheese.
Serves 6.
— Recipe from the Denver Post, credited to the late food editor Helen Dollaghan and said to be one of the most requested recipes from the newspaper's archives.
NORTH CAROLINA PULLED-PORK BARBECUE
3 1/2 cups cider vinegar (20 fluid ounces)
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons hot red-pepper flakes
Salt and pepper
1 (8- to 10-pound) bone-in pork shoulder roast (preferably butt end) with skin
Coleslaw
Bring vinegar to a boil with sugar, red-pepper flakes, 2 teaspoons salt and 1 tablespoon pepper in a small nonreactive saucepan, stirring until sugar has dissolved, then cool. Set aside 2 cups vinegar sauce to serve with sandwiches.
While sauce cools, score pork skin in a crosshatch pattern with a sharp knife (forming 1-inch diamonds), cutting through skin and fat but not into meat. Pat meat dry and rub all over with 1 tablespoon each of salt and pepper. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour before grilling.
Prepare grill for indirect-heat cooking over low heat, leaving space in middle for disposable roasting pan.
When coals have cooled to about 300 degrees (45 minutes to 1 hour; when most coals will have burned out), put disposable roasting pan on bottom rack of grill between the two remaining mounds of coals, then fill pan halfway with water. Add a couple of handfuls of unlit charcoal to each charcoal mound, then put grill rack on so hinges are over coals.
Oil grill rack, then put pork, skin side up, on rack above roasting pan. Grill pork, with lid ajar (for air, so coals remain lit), basting meat with sauce and turning over every 30 minutes (to maintain a temperature of 250 to 275 degrees, add a couple of handfuls of coals to each side about every 30 minutes), until fork-tender (a meat fork should insert easily) and an instant-read thermometer inserted 2 inches into center of meat (avoid bone) registers 190 degrees, 7 to 8 hours total.
Transfer pork to a cutting board. If skin is not crisp, cut it off with at least 1/4 inch fat attached (cut any large pieces into bite-size ones) and roast, fat side down, in a rimmed sheet pan in a 350-degree oven until crisp, 15 to 20 minutes.
When meat is cool enough to handle, shred it using 2 forks. Transfer to a bowl.
Serve pork, cracklings and coleslaw together on buns. Serve reserved vinegar sauce on the side.
Note: Pork can be roasted in a large roasting pan, covered with parchment paper and then foil, in the middle of a 350-degree oven. Roast one hour, then pour 1 cup vinegar sauce over meat. Roast one hour more, then baste with 1 cup more sauce. Continue to roast, covered, adding water (1/2 cup at a time) to pan if needed, until fork-tender (a meat fork should insert easily), about 2 hours more. Cut off skin (see recipe above) and roast in a rimmed sheet pan on lowest rack of oven. Meanwhile, return pork to oven and roast, uncovered, on middle rack, until meat is browned and skin is crisp, about 45 minutes more (5 to 6 hours total roasting time, depending on size of roast).
Serves 8.
— Recipe from Gourmet
Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at Hrinella@reviewjournal.com. Find more of her stories at www.reviewjournal.com, and follow @HKRinella on Twitter.
