SPONSORED CONTENT -- (StatePoint) Football season brings family and friends together, making it the perfect time to serve crowd-pleasing snacks that are both delicious and nourishing.
To help take the stress out of hosting, Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist Dawn Jackson Blatner offers simple tips for creating a satisfying spread that lets you spend less time in the kitchen and more time enjoying the action.
1. Upgrade the classics
The goal isn’t to take game-day favorites off the menu, it’s to build on classics with satisfying, balanced upgrades that add more nutrition to the lineup. Think nachos loaded with beans and fresh salsa, grilled sliders with colorful slaw, creamy dips with both chips and veggies, and protein-packed snacks like hard-cooked eggs and nuts.
2. Mix up flavors and textures
Offering a variety of flavors and textures can make even a simple appetizer spread more exciting. Try including a combination of creamy, crunchy, savory and spicy bites, so there’s something to appeal to every guest. You can also vary how foods are served by mixing dips, skewers, and other handheld appetizers.
3. Bring out food in stages
Instead of putting everything on the table at once, stagger appetizers throughout the event. Start with a few easy snacks you’ve already prepped when everyone arrives, introduce another option around kickoff, and save something special for halftime. Serving food in stages helps keep the spread feeling fresh and gives guests something new to look forward to as the game continues.
4. Keep game-day prep simple
To make entertaining easier without sacrificing nutrition or flavor, keep versatile, ready-to-use ingredients on hand that can quickly become appetizers, snacks or additions to a larger spread.
One easy way to put that advice into action is with Cobb Salad Skewers made with Eggland’s Best Hard-Cooked Peeled Eggs. Packed with protein and fresh ingredients, they’re a simple handheld bite that delivers the familiar flavors of a Cobb salad in an easy-to-serve game-day snack.
Eggland’s Best Hard-Cooked Peeled Eggs provide 6 grams of protein per egg and come ready to eat, making them a convenient addition to your game-day spread. Plus, they contain more than double the Vitamin B12 and 25% less saturated fat compared to ordinary eggs, so they’re a nutritious option to keep you energized from kickoff to the final whistle.
Ingredients:
12 Eggland’s Best Hard-Cooked Peeled Eggs, halved
6 slices of cooked bacon, chopped into bite-sized pieces
2 large chicken breasts
2 small garden cucumbers, sliced into 1/2-inch slices
6-8 ounces cheddar cheese, cut into small cubes
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
1/2 head of iceberg lettuce, rinsed and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil, for topping
Sea salt and ground pepper, to taste
8-inch bamboo skewers
Directions:
1. Prepare the chicken: Rub chicken breasts with olive oil, salt and pepper. Allow them to sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes.
2. Grill the chicken: Preheat a grill or cast-iron skillet/grill pan over medium-high heat. Grill the chicken for about 6 minutes per side, or until the chicken is cooked through (165 degrees F). Remove from the grill and let it rest for a few minutes before cutting into 1/2-inch cubes.
3. Prepare the remaining ingredients: Slice the cucumbers, cube the cheese, chop the bacon, halve the eggs, and rinse and chop the lettuce.
4. Assemble the skewers: Thread the ingredients onto the bamboo skewers in desired order.
5. Dress the skewers: Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Or, level up by pairing the skewers with blue cheese or ranch dressing.
For more nutrition information and game-day recipe ideas, visithttps://www.egglandsbest.com/.
This football season, don’t fumble your game-day spread. With a few hosting tricks and ingredient swaps in your playbook, you can serve up delicious and nutritious snacks that your crowd will go wild for.
