Spice up your Super Bowl Sunday snacks with local ingredients

Super Bowl Sunday is the country’s second-largest food consumption day according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, coming behind only Thanksgiving. If you are a partisan fan, Philly cheese steaks or KC ribs are probably on the menu, but for disappointed Bengals fans, why not support your community by serving local food?

I love crispy chicken wings, but not the mess and calories of frying them in oil. Instead, I have a simple oven-baked no-oil recipe that has worked for me many times. Cover a shallow baking pan with parchment paper, place the wings on the paper, bake for 30 minutes at 300 degrees, then bake for an additional 45 minutes at 425 degrees. Turn them a couple times to get them crisp all over. That’s all there is to it. 

To help the wings become crisper, recipes suggest coating them in baking powder (not baking soda), which draws moisture to the surface where it can evaporate. Baking powder also creates air bubbles that expand the surface area of the skin, so there is more skin area to get crispy. However, I don’t use it, because ours is a low sodium household, and consuming one wing dredged in baking powder would account for 20% of the recommended daily sodium intake.

A low-sodium alternative is to line the baking pan with parchment paper. I used to line the pan with foil, but the wings tended to stick to the foil, whereas they crisp up without sticking to parchment paper. The two brands of parchment paper in my pantry are rated for baking up to 425 degrees.

Chicken wings are typically served with some sort of sauce, but I don’t do so for three reasons. First, sauce adds unwanted calories. Second, sauce makes wings soggy, whereas for me the whole point of eating wings is the crispy crunch. Third, the chicken wings I get at Oxford’s Farmers Market from Jennifer Bayne’s 7 Wonders Farm are flavorful, so why cover them with a salty and sugary sauce?

Pizza is probably the most popular carry-out or delivered Super Bowl food, but I prefer to make my own using mostly local ingredients. For thin crust pizza, I mix 2/3 cup whole wheat flour, 1/3 cup white flour, 1/3 teaspoon salt, 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons water, and stir until a pliable dough forms. Add a bit more water if necessary.

Flour a work surface and knead the dough briefly until it becomes smooth. Cut the dough into 2 even pieces. Use a rolling pin to roll out the 2 pieces into very thin circles, about 8-9 inches in diameter. Transfer each dough to a separate cookie sheet and prick each one all over with a fork. Position the oven rack at the top third of the oven and bake for 10 minutes at 550 degrees.

Meanwhile, prepare pizza toppings. You probably don’t need me to tell you what to use. If you’re using local ingredients like mushrooms, onion and peppers which are available most of the year, make sure to cook them in a pan first with some olive oil before placing them on the baked dough. Local sausage or other meat is also best cooked first in the oven. 

I start by spreading tomato sauce across the surface of the baked shell. Carfagna and Local Folks are two locally produced brands available at MOON Co-op and Kroger. I then add the toppings and cover with thinly sliced or grated mozzarella and parmesan, oregano, garlic and crushed red pepper. Return to the oven until the cheese melts, around 5 minutes.

The Super Bowl is this Sunday at 6:30 p.m., so this Saturday is your last chance to get local ingredients from the Oxford Farmers Market for the occasion. The market is open 8 a.m.-12 p.m. every Saturday.

James Rubenstein is president of the Board of Directors for the Oxford Free Press and professor emeritus of geography at Miami University.