cooking methods

help with a class project on cooking methods

Good afternoon fellow LSU fans. I'm not quite sure if I am going about this the right way but I'm looking for an individual that I can talk to, over the internet, possibly through this forum or email, that is willing to share some stories and information about their personal experiences with LSU tailgating. I'm doing a culture project for my antropology class and I have to interview someone about my topic which is, cooking methods for LSU tailgaiting. The interview will consist of five or six questions and all that is needed is a typed response. The questions will be based around prefered cooking methods, likes and dislikes, and favorite foods. If anyone is willing to help I would greatly appriciate it.
Thanks,
Eric Smith :geauxtige

 

You ought to post the questionnaire on this thread and we can respond here or via pm.

When we play aTm....there's a lot of recipes for dogs out there, if cooking the opposing mascot is your game !!

:lol:


By the way, where do you go to school? (even if it's not LSU)

 

I go to NSU for nursing and I'm going to take your advice and post the questions here

#1. What is your favorite cooking method? Grilling, smoking, Cajun microwave...those types of things

#2. What is you're preferred meat or seafood to cook? Basically, what's your favorite thing to cook

#3. What is you're normal cooking time? With this I'm looking for start time, as in do you start cooking the night before and just bring thr finished product to the tailgate or cook at the tailgate? I'm trying to figure out if the preparation and finish is a tradition that is always done one specific way.

#4. With tradition in mind, do you always cook the same thing? Or is it a mix or does it vary from game to game?

#5. If you go to away games, does this change what cooking method that you normally use? The way I'm looking at this is if travel hinders the normal way you go about things.

With these questions feel free to say as little or as much as you like. What I am doing for this project is using stories from other people to paint a picture of a particular culture group, ie. LSU tailgating. Just FYI I will be using your exact words and any names will not be used.

 

For an aubarn game one year we had Pastalaya. Made 2 of these large batches, an 80lb pig (Cajun Cooker/Microwave), and 7 kegs was just barely enough. Oh, that was a total of 30 gal. of Pastalaya.....

 

I'm a chef and own a restaurant who tailgates, both home and away.

To be honest, I don't cook much for tailgates because I don't organize them, I always bring something. One thing that I noticed is people who organize the tailgates do so in order to cook at them. I enjoy other peoples cooking so I usually "lay back" and try not to upstage someone or step on their toes.

As a restaurant chef/owner, I tell people (when the subject comes up) that EVERYONE who walks in the door of my cafe can cook...and not only that...they can cook 2,3 or4 things that are world class; things that I can't do any better with.

The tailgate cooking I've seen falls into that category.

I'll try to answer your questionnaire today sometime with comments on equipment.

 

Sounds like just walking into your cafe would make me a better cook. :lol:

 

1) My favorite tailgate cooking method is grilling and smoking. Both those methods are conducive to drinking...especially smoking because it's not real fast paced. I'm used to cooking several tables worth of food at the same time with more tickets in rapid succession.

Smoking especially requires attention only every 20-30 minutes which leaves plenty of time in between to sip a few.

I would recommend smoking something the day before and just heating it up in the smoker at the tailgate.

Frying is the opposite...it goes by quickly (unless you're frying bone-in chicken which takes 15-20 minutes). The advantage of frying at tailgates is you get it over with fairly quickly with drinking in between batches.

2) I prefer cooking seafood...it's Louisiana for crying out loud. Fried seafood at a tailgate is great, but it has to be fried and served immediately. Fried seafood that has been sitting around is not very good.

3) depends on what you're doing. Anything that can be done ahead of time needs to be done in advance. I'm a big advocate of bringing cooked food to a tailgate. But you have to be creative about how to reheat things and keep them warm since there's usually no electricity. Propane grills and cast iron dutch ovens usually work well.

4) The best is a mix of new dishes with the same old ones that are a hit. You ever get stuck on a great dish at a restaurant that you get over and over....and you look forward to getting it again there? Well the same with tailgates. There's nothing wrong with having Gumbo or Jambalaya over and over again week after week. I like the idea of themed tailgates whether it has to do with that weeks opponents or not. The Bell Tower Drive krewe does a great job at this. They'll have a Hawaiian Luau and the group will have grass skirts and exotic rum drinks while someone's roasting a pig.

5) Travel should not inhibit what you cook because if you have to haul everything up (or down ) to Baton Rouge, the only thing different is how different the drive time is...or how much earlier you have to get on the road.

 

As far as equipment goes, everyone has bullet smokers and barbecue grills available to them.

Everyone should have a gas range as well. Those Coleman stoves are just too compact for me. I have a friend who has a remodeling business and he gave me a home four burner range jetted for natural gas. I converted it to propane...there's a kit you can get at any hardware stove to do this. I built a platform it slips in out of with hurricane fence hardware that it slips in. a couple of pieces of scrap plywood helps black the wind.

This is a great asset because trying to cook things on low heat is impossible with crawfish boil burners. I use this to make sauces and reheat stuff.

There are a lot of good frying rigs out there. One of these is essential.

One thing I wish I had (and I will soon) is an oven. I want to rig up an oven for propane so I can bake things like biscuits and desserts as well as using it to cook casseroles and braise and roast things...plus there's those burners on top that are great. Keeping things warm will be a lot easier if I have an oven.

It might be easier to just get an electric one and a generator. Most people use their generators for music and TV sets and it would be fruitless to just bring the oven in the back of a truck and assume that you can use someone's generator.

another thing I bring with equipment is water and bleach. At festivals there's always water hookups, but at LSU there's none so it's advisable to bring along some container(s) that carry about 20 gallons of water. You can't always wash your hands at tailgates, so a capful of bleach in a bucket of water is a good sanitizing solution to dip your hands in for food safety. I store the spoons and spatulas in the sanitizing solution too.

 

I don't know how to thank you steve, this is just what I was looking for. I really appriciate the time you took to answer a few questions. I now know who I need to go to for some good cooking advice! I'll be sure to let you know how I did on my project.