9 must-have dishes for the perfect Super Bowl menu (2024)

February 1, 2019 9:48 am ET

So you’re planning to host a Super Bowl party? Well, I’ve got good news for you: I am an experienced and distinguishing Super Bowl party guest, here to offer my expertise and help you put together the ideal menu for entertaining guests during the big game.

You can track down heat-and-eat versions of a lot these foods fairly easily around Super Bowl time, but in my esteemed opinion, that’s a cop-out. You’re having a Super Bowl party; no one said it’d be a picnic. (Note: Don’t have a picnic.) Any proper host should have the time and energy to put out some homemade dishes to delight their guests. It’s not the Just OK Bowl, folks.

Let’s start with the obvious:

1. Buffalo wings

This is non-negotiable. Wings should be available from the moment guests arrive at your party, but it’s important that they be fresh. The best way to ensure freshness, undoubtedly, is to prepare them yourself, following the extremely simple recipe I detailed here. If you have nowhere to fry them that won’t make your entire home smell like the grease vat behind a fast-food restaurant, it’s OK to order them. But you’re going to want to order them, like, now, because wing places get swamped for the Super Bowl and uncertain wing availability puts you, the host, at great risk of massive embarrassment.

If you’re making them yourself, definitely don’t fry them all at once. I’m going to want fresh wings around midway through the second quarter. If you’re trusting takeout, probably put in a separate order for the second round of wings. Maybe disguise your voice and use a different name, so they don’t confuse the two distinct orders with one larger order and bring them all together.

You should also provide:

2. Bean dip

There may be vegetarians at your party, and you can shut them up with a tasty bean dip while I get down on all the meat. Might as well make it a good one too. I’m thinking a multi-layer situation, definitely including layers of refried beans, guacamole, sour cream and melted cheese. The other layers are up to you, but some sort of old family bean-dip recipe, passed along through generations, is certainly preferable.

But no meat, obviously. Vegetarians have some pretty good points, if you look into them. And it’s nice of them to be willing to forgo meat and make a small concession in our species’ reckless stewardship of the planet. But don’t let them know you know that. Definitely lay on a little bit of guilt, like, “Hey, you should check out the layer dip, I know you like beans because you’re a vegetarian, and I left out the chili just for you. Oh, and by the way, make sure to check out…”

3. The token crudité

No one’s here for raw vegetables, but you’ve got to lay some out. And if you need to cut corners somewhere, make it here. People just want to be able to nibble on a couple of pieces of cauliflower to convince themselves that they paid some heed to healthy eating even during the Super Bowl, and because sometimes you need something to shove in your mouth when you can’t imagine fitting anything else of real substance in your stomach. That’s where celery comes in.

You can definitely find a lousy pre-made crudité at your supermarket around Super Bowl time, and lousy is good enough, here. Open it up before guests show up and shove it into some dusty corner away from the foot traffic. Maybe put out some ranch dressing out with it, so someone can heroically discover the ranch dressing around halftime when you’ve run out of the blue cheese you served with all the wings.

But don’t waste any prep time on the crudité that could be spent on your…

4. Pigs-in-blankets

Will there be children at your event? They’ll leave in tears after me and all the other right-minded frankfurter enthusiasts at your party establish position at the buffet table and eat up all your pigs-in-blankets before a single one of them reaches the grubby hands of the kids for whom they were presumably intended.

You’re going to need to construct these yourself: The pre-wrapped pigs-in-blankets you can just buy and bake almost always feature subpar hot dogs. Start with a high-quality co*cktail wiener, and be generous with whatever pastry you’re using to wrap them. Multiple mustard options would be a nice touch.

5. Some sort of pizza-related appetizer

This is a party, so you need to give at least a nod to the prominence of pizza. Full pizzas are going to take up too much room both at the buffet and in the stomach, so opt instead for a fun, pizza-themed appetizer.

The easy options are frozen pizza bagels or pizza rolls, and those are fine if necessary. But you know what would really thrill me? There’s a deli near where I grew up that makes pizza egg rolls, and they’re phenomenal. Something like that would be too big and ungainly for a Super Bowl party, though, so mini pizza egg rolls would be preferable.

I don’t think that deli sells miniature versions, so you’ll probably have to make them yourself, as well. It’s probably painstaking, but it so happens that egg-roll wrapper is an underappreciated appetizer medium, and your newfound familiarity with how to make homemade egg-roll variants will only benefit you whenever you need to entertain me again in the future.

6. A comically long party sub

The longest your best local sandwich shop will sell you, unless your best local sandwich shop only offers party subs of moderate length. Your party sub should be at least six feet long, because I want to eat from a sandwich that is taller than I am. That type of size means you can have it split up by section into at least three different sub styles. Obviously one should be a traditional American cold-cut combo and another should feature four or more Italian meats. The third one is up to you. After all, it’s your party, and you shouldn’t shy away from injecting a little bit of your personality here. Just no veggie. Oh, and try to get fresh mozzarella instead of provolone on the Italian portion.

The deli where I worked — different from the one with the pizza egg-rolls — did not sell heroes longer than six feet due to the size limitations of its bread distributors’ ovens. But here’s my thing: Why not snake the dough back and forth before you bake it? It would allow for much more sandwich on a loaf that was still six feet long from tip to tip, plus it’d look squiggly and interesting.

Speaking of interesting:

7. An exotic meat, elegantly prepared

There’s something you need to account for: What if the Super Bowl is bad? What if the Rams put up 21 points in the first quarter, Tom Brady suddenly develops a mild but insurmountable case of the yips, and the game gets out of hand swiftly? Sure, you’ll spend a few minutes reveling in the way the Patriots are embarrassing themselves, but you’re soon going to want some better fodder for conversation.

A boring game is no excuse for a boring party, so you, the host, should ready at least one exotic meat, elegantly prepared. Nothing disgusting — this isn’t Fear Factor — but a meat most people at the party have never tried before, and one that turns out to be stunningly delicious when cooked so perfectly. Maybe, like, elk medallions, roasted to medium rare and sliced thin, served atop homemade sourdough toast with a drizzle of horseradish and a sprig of fresh rosemary. I bet that’s good. I don’t know if I’ve ever tried elk.

8. Sorbet pops in the likeness of Johnny Unitas

Hey, look, that elk was incredible, and you did a really fantastic job of it. But it turns out elk is a little gamey, and so I’m going to need to refresh my palate before dessert. That’s why you should next bring out some sorbet pops in the exact likeness of NFL legend Johnny Unitas.

Exactly how you depict Unitas in sorbet is up to you, but it needs to look unmistakably like Unitas, because you don’t want people getting confused and thinking it’s Peyton Manning. I could not find any Johnny Unitas molds on Etsy, but I trust your creativity. You’re probably going to need take a toothpick to each pop to get the flattop just right.

Then, after that diversion, the big finish:

9. Several triumphant dessert fountains

There’s always room for a little something sweet after a big meal, so don’t let the sheer volume of food you’ve already served steer you away from a big finish. Get many dessert fountains, and fill them with sweet toppings both predictable — chocolate, white chocolate, caramel — and outrageous — peanut sauce, cream-cheese frosting, liquified cookie dough. Surround them with fresh fruit, cake, cookies, pretzels, nuts, gummy candy, doughnuts, marshmallows, popcorn, and anything else you can think of that might taste good if dipped in a dazzling dessert fountain.

Then skewer up a marshmallow, a banana, a piece of bacon and a full cannoli and cast it into the fountain. Watch as thick, creamy caramel cascades down over your creation, breathe deep, and enjoy the satisfaction that could only come with adequately feeding me at your Super Bowl party.