Food tips for tailgaters ahead of Virginia Tech’s first home football game
ROANOKE, Va. (WFXR) – The long wait is finally over. The Virginia Tech Hokies return to Lane Stadium to take on the Marshall Thundering Herd at 4:30 on September 7.
With home football games comes a thundering herd of tailgaters, and their food. Experienced tailgaters may know what to do to properly prepare food, but maybe not everyone. Regardless, here are some helpful tips on how to watch the game with food that’s safe for consumption.
It starts with getting the food there. All foods must be securely packaged to avoid any messes or cross-contamination among them.
“I like to use Ziploc bags personally,” Melissa Wright, an associate extension specialist in food safety at Virginia Tech, said. “If you want to cover things with Ceram wrap, that’s a bit iffier, you’re going to have water from the ice that’s melting and getting into your foods, so I would pick secure containers like Tupperware type containers, or Ziploc bags.”
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Once you get there, any cold dishes should be kept cold, and hot dishes should be kept hot throughout the day.
“In order to keep the cold foods cold, we’d like to have them in a cooler by themselves, not the same cooler you would use for your drinks or your condiments that’s going to be opened pretty frequently,” Wright said. “We also recommend you put them in coolers with white lids, those are going to reflect the light, so you keep that (food) nice and cool inside.”
Raw meats that will be grilled should be kept away from cold foods as well, to avoid cross-contamination.
For hot foods, crockpots are usually the handiest item for keeping them at a warm enough temperature. However, that requires an outlet, and not all tailgaters will have access to that.
Wright recommends keeping the crockpot in a dry cooler wrapped in towels for insulation. If you don’t have an extra cooler, you can also use your grill.
“You’re grilling burgers right, you have people who are going to be taking off the grill, and you could always move it to the side of the grill,” Wright said. “It’s not direct cooking, it’s going to stay hot, it’s just not going to continue to cook, but it’s going to be in a warm space, greater than 140 degrees Fahrenheit.”
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Moving from quality to quantity, you shouldn’t bring too much food, because it will probably not be safe enough to be saved as leftovers.
Even though it won’t be extremely hot outside for the game, the food will likely be exposed to the danger zone of temperature. That is anywhere between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Unfortunately, you should throw those foods away,” Wright said. “When it’s in that zone the bacteria can grow to a level that even refrigeration, it’s not going to stop it, it’s going to slow it down, but the bacteria are still going to be there.”
Anyone who has any more questions about food safety can contact Virginia Tech’s food science department.
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