Tailgating guide: What to do with your Lambeau leftovers

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One of the best things about living in Green Bay is hosting friends and family for Packer games. Even if we don’t get tickets, there is nothing like the energy and excitement of game day in Titletown. And we love a good tailgate party down by the stadium.

Being gracious, generous Midwesterners, our Packer Backer friends tend to bring enough food to feed half of Lambeau. And so, when Victory Monday rolls around, my fridge is stacked like the Packers offensive line. What to do with all that extra food?

Here are some tips I’ve picked up after nearly 20 years of Packer tailgates:

Ice, ice, baby
We live less than 15 minutes from the stadium. But any dietitian will tell you it’s super important to keep cold foods cold and hot foods hot. Be sure to put extra ice in your cooler when transporting raw meats, cheeses or mayonnaise-based salads, and cook grilled meats to an appropriate internal temp. When cleaning up, get all your leftovers back in the cooler as quickly as possible, especially during the pre-season and those warm September games. If any food item looks like it’s spent too much time on the field, toss it like a Hail Mary.

Meats to reheat
If you’ve properly cooked and cooled your grilled meats, there’s no reason why you can’t repurpose them. Hamburgers are the easiest; just chop them up and stir into chili or a pot of spaghetti sauce. Leftover brats are delicious, even when re-warmed. But if you have a bunch, you can dice them up finely and season for a sausage and potato soup. (Think Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana.) If you have brats and hamburgers together, chop them both up into little bits and mix with Italian seasoning, then add pasta sauce for an easy spaghetti Bolognese. Leftover hot dogs are nobody’s first draft pick, but my girls for years would eat them cut up and mixed into Kraft mac-n-cheese. Another option? Roll them in warm pancakes for kid-friendly pigs in a blanket. Grilled chicken is my favorite. You can mix the leftover chicken chunks with greens and salad dressing for an easy Caesar salad, or shred the leftover chicken breasts for barbecue chicken sandwiches, chicken quesadillas, any play you want to call.

Lotta buns, hun?
Sometimes the meat is gone, but bags and bags of hot dog or hamburger buns remain. While you can put buns in freezer bags and freeze for a month or two, I’d rather use them to make open-faced tuna melt sandwiches or, better yet, garlic toast to go with the spaghetti Bolognese (above). If the buns are dried out, you can dice them into chunks and make homemade croutons or, closer to Thanksgiving week when the Packers play the Vikings again, use in your homemade turkey stuffing.

Snacks to the max
My family thinks they are being so helpful when they leave their leftover bags of chips and snacks. But once the game is over, I want those calories out of my home field! Fortunately, I realized I can portion out the munchies into snack-sized Ziploc bags for my girls to take in their next-week lunches without the snacks going stale. And if we wind up with a dozen or so half-used bags of tortilla chips, I’ll simply serve nachos for dinner. (That’s another good way to use up extra grilled hamburgers – just dice and add taco seasoning. Taco Tuesday = touchdown!)

Produce perfection
I love it when guests bring fruit and veggie platters, because those leftovers are the healthiest of all. Any remaining apples, strawberries, pineapple or melon gets pureed in a blender with Greek yogurt, bananas and orange juice for a simple smoothie. And I repurpose leftover veggies into weeknight stir fry as often as green and gold fans shout, “Go Pack, Go!” Once we start closing in on Halloween, I keep a stash of veggies and dip around so I can make my trademark spooky skeleton. But stir fry or vegetable soup will work any time of the season.

Dairyland delight
When friends and family come from out of state, they love to sample Wisconsin cheese curds and local meats and sausages. Good for them; bad for my cholesterol! Whatever is unopened, I put in the freezer for another tailgate party or my husband’s poker night. But leftover cheese curds? If there are any (which, truthfully, this rarely happens) you can dice them up small and mix into a batch of scrambled eggs or a cold pasta salad. Perhaps the best suggestion I’ve heard, though – thread them on a skewer and serve them in a Bloody Mary at your next Packer tailgate party. All the more reason to love being a Cheesehead!

What do you do with your tailgate leftovers? Please share suggestions below!

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Laura
Laura is a small-town Wisconsin girl who’s made her home in De Pere for the last 15 years. She has a journalism degree from UW-Oshkosh and works as a copy editor and freelance writer when she’s not working on a novel, running, or teaching yoga. Her family includes her husband, two daughters at home, and an adult stepson and daughter-in-law, both of whom serve our country in the U.S. Marine Corps. What I love most about living in this area: Visiting the Brown County libraries, running on the Fox River Trail and cheering for the Green Bay Packers!