In the annals of unfortunately timed cookbooks, the upcoming "Tailgreat: How to Crush It at Tailgating" (Ten Speed Press; $28) ranks up there.
The book, by the James Beard Award-winning chef John Currence, will debut Aug. 28, just a few weeks after the announcement that most college football games, including the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences, have been canceled for the season.
"The only way it gets worse is if the SEC [Southeastern Conference] announces they're canceling games the day the book comes out," says Currence, who owns four restaurants in the football-mad college town of Oxford, Mississippi. As the leading chef in the University of Mississippi's hometown, he has become a master at preparing food for the legendary tailgates at the Grove, the 10-acre party space on the Ole Miss campus.
Currence notes that, while a good tailgate upgrades the spectator's experience, the food needs to be interesting. "Tailgating has become sterile, as far as menu selection goes. It's like a repeat loop in an old cartoon: Cold chicken tenders, pimento cheese, seven-layer dip. Repeat." The book offers a total of 125 recipes for high-flavor party food, from grilled wedge salad on a stick to sweet-mustard pulled pork.
He has a particular fondness for fried chicken_though as an ingredient, not a recipe. "I'm unapologetic about the fact that I don't fry a lot of chicken any more, because no one makes it better than Popeye's," he says.
This technique for getting the essence of fried chicken without doing the work shows up in his recipes for such dishes as fried chicken salad with Alabama Firecrackers, the popular Southern snack of saltine crackers tossed with spices and baked. For his "God's Own Buffalo Chicken Dip," Currence admits that he can't source enough Popeye's to keep up with demand for this creamy dip when there's a home game.
But it's his recipe for Spicy Fried Chicken Buttered Popcorn that stands out. There's no actual fried chicken in this recipe for what is essentially a very luscious, buttery, and highly seasoned popcorn, and it should not be confused with the fried nuggets known as popcorn chicken. This popcorn's intense flavor comes from a seasoning mix that Currence makes with a mix of chicken soup base, garlic powder, cayenne, and Accent (or MSG) that clings tightly to the kernels, thanks to all that butter.
What's incredible about this addictive snack, though, is the way it is popped. Currence cooks the kernels in an insane amount of clarified butter instead of oil. This method suffuses the popcorn with an even richness instead of the soggy clump that results from adding melted butter at the end.
It also makes the kernels tender but crisp outside. "This spicy fried chicken version is crazy fun and surprising," says Currence, and I agree. It's well worth trying this technique even as you accept the fact that there's less popcorn ({ cup) than clarified butter ({ cup plus 2 tablespoons) in the ingredient list. If the end product doesn't taste exactly like fried chicken, it is still profoundly chicken-y, along with the salty, peppery, savory accents that go into a good fried bird's crust.
Currence did get one thing right with the timing: Sales of ready-to-eat popcorn and caramel corn reached $1.5 billion, up 5%, for the 52-week period that ended in mid-May, according to Snack Food and Wholesale Bakery. Garrett Smith, president of American Pop Corn Co., estimates that sales of uncooked popcorn have risen more than 70% since mid-March, when Americans started sheltering in place.
And there's still hope you can serve this popcorn at a socially distanced tailgate. The SEC hasn't canceled its season, at least not yet.
