If you’re going to a Super Bowl party this year then you’re well aware that the food spread is the hidden minefield of the evening. Every gathering is different, but regardless of where you end up there are going to be good and bad food items on offer. Here at SB Nation.com we want you to have the best possible evening, and to that end I’ve created a handy guide for how you should handle your gorging.
Super Bowl party food, ranked
Prepare yourself to feast.
Photo by Jeff Fusco/Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
First off, a couple of caveats we need to get out of the way first. This list assumes you’re going to an average, stock-standard, classic Super Bowl party. I will not be ranking boujee Food Network Super Bowl recipes like this one by Guy Fieri for “Italian Stuffed Jalapenos.” They don’t belong here. We’re looking for the true experience of commonly found crowd pleasers.
The 16 most-common Super Bowl foods — ranked.
- Buffalo Chicken Dip: I know this is going to anger purists, but in recent years the buffalo dip has surpassed the actual wings in my personal ranking of items. I’m definitely not saying that the dip is better than wings, don’t get it twisted — but considering time and place it offers more than wings can. You get the essential elements of the buffalo wing experience, in a form factor that offers as few problems as possible. You don’t want to be the person with a mountain of bones in front of them, having to ask where the trash can is to leave your waste and finding the bathroom to wash your hands. The dip allows you to go back over, and over, and over again relatively incognito.
- Buffalo wings: Wings are still pretty good though.
- Pizza: This is the only time pizza will not make No. 1 on a list for me, and I’m a little conflicted by that, to be honest. Pizza is always good, always reliable — but it’s a week-in, week-out kind of thing. Not special enough to reach the summit.
- Chips and guac: Perfection. Only ranks lower because there’s a time limit on the guac. You need to get in, eat the stuff and get out before it turns brown and weird.
- Hot dogs and hamburgers: These grill buddies come in together at No. 5 because they should not be separated in a party setting. Excellent foods to be sure, but highly dependent on the grillmaster’s ability to cook food. Chances are you’re going to end up with a dry, well-done burger that resembles a hockey puck and a charred meat tube of a hot dog that’s more charcoal than sustenance.
- Mozzarella sticks: Another beautiful food that has a built-in timer, like the guac. Get them early and they’re delightful, too late and you’ve got a congealed mess.
- King’s Hawaiian Rolls: It’s a regular-ass piece of bread, but it’s good.
- Veggie tray: Your solid mid-card item. It’s good for most of the night, often under appreciated and provides a solid conveyance for dip gathering. Don’t underrate the tray.
- Nachos: Normally would rank way higher, but the communal nature of everyone grabbing bits with their poop hands pushes this down.
- 7-layer dip: It’s fine. Always made by someone who considers themselves a “foodie”, but also thinks emptying cans of crap in sequential order into a glass bowl is the height of decadence.
- Cocktail meatballs: I don’t know what happened with cocktail meatballs. In the past I remembered these are beloved spheres of party happiness, but more recently the sauce seems to keep getting sweeter with each year, like there was a communal summit on bite-sized meatballs and the world agreed that “almost dessert” was what they were aiming for. As such I’ve become a non-fan.
- Potato skins: This one is entirely socially engineered. In isolation, they are one of my favorite items with a bullet, but hosts never estimate the right amount of potato skins to make. So you wind up with 12 sad servings on a plate with 25 people in attendance and everyone is doing the internal math, afraid to be the one to grab the potato skin. By the time you steel your nerve they’re cold and unsatisfying.
- Chili: I see all these sites listing chili as a top-five Super Bowl food and it tells me you can’t trust the internet. Chili is an intensely personal dish with a required care and spice complexity that doesn’t lend itself to mass production. There will probably be chili at the party, and it was probably made as an afterthought. It will fill you up and you will gain little from it.
- The packet-made brownie: Nobody is baking from scratch unless you find yourself in a potluck situation [see below]. If brownies come out of the oven they’re from a box. They will be just OK.
- The store-bought brownie: These will be cold, dry, and bad.
- The cheese tray: Hands down the worst, again because of circumstance. You don’t want to kick your feasting off with a whole bunch of cheese, and the hot items have a timer on them. By the time you come back to the cheese tray it’ll be room temperature, the slices will be dry around the edges and you’ll have their weird, inexplicable cheese sweat developing on each piece. No thanks.
Never forget the golden rule of gatherings.
Supplanting any rankings of football food is the possibility you’re in a potluck situation. This takes the basic concept of the good food/bad food dichotomy and turns the risk factor up to 11.
If you find yourself in a potluck, then before you put anything on your plate you need to be on your game and constantly working reconnaissance. Your objective in those early minutes is to find out who brought what, and evaluate their ability to cook. Listen to the crowd, discern who is legitimately saying “wow this is delicious!” from those being polite as they eat the disgusting sausage bites Julian brought. Ask probing questions like “where did you get the recipe for [insert food here]?”
If the answer is: “My grandma used to make them all the time,” that’s a good sign.
If it’s: “I never made these before, but they looked really cool on Pinterest,” be wary. It could be a trap.
It’s critical to keep your nerve in a potluck scenario. If you’re hungry feel free to graze, but stick to safe foods like the vegetable tray. Things with as little preparation required as possible. I recommend the veggies over things like bagged chips because they wont fill you up or make you feel bloated — allowing you to save room for the good stuff.
Keep monitoring the table for what is moving quickly. If an item is getting a lot of seconds-attention then leap on that like a lion catching a gazelle. Even if it’s not you’re No. 1 choice, at least stash some aside for later.
Large gatherings really help the shotgun approach to food gathering too, because you always have access to the “abandoned plate” technique. This involves you putting your plate in an inconspicuous place if the food you got is bad. It’ll sit there the entire night and people will assume it was left there by accident or merely forgotten. You’ll know better.
Have fun, be safe, feast well.
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