The Super Bowl Is An Excuse To Eat Like An Idiot
There are some people who believe the Super Bowl is a game that's played between two teams in order to determine the champion of that year's NFL season. These people are wrong.
Sure, that's happening kind of near the event. But between the large board of betting squares, the 30-second multi-million dollar short films, the critiques of whoever is singing the National Anthem, the camera cutaways to famous people to see who they're wearing, and the building excitement/immediate letdown of the pomp and circumstance that is the halftime show, the actual performance of the players on the field is somewhere near the 12th most important aspect of the day as a whole. (Right above ridiculous prop bets, right below the Puppy Bowl.) It has become way more than just a game. It has become, truly, an American holiday.
And like any other holiday our great country observes, food is a huge deal. But whereas other dinners and get-togethers throughout the year have a sense of decorum and air of "being proper," the Super Bowl is a day to throw away any sense of dignity and simply eat like an idiot. (In a way, it's the unofficial end of "eating way too much during winter" celebration that began back with Thanksgiving.) To honor this tradition, here are five of the most insane Super Bowl-related culinary feats:
The 47-Layer Dip
There's a reason seven-layer dip is a mainstay at Super Bowl parties. It's super easy to make while still looking complex enough to give people the impression you put some work into it. And while people have tried to specialize the dish by adding their own layers here and there, leave it to the folks at Buzzfeed to create a dip that goes a whopping forty-seven layers deep.
Dip Shaped Like A Football
While the above image may not seem too over-the-top, you have to understand the ingredients contained within. You got 8 ounces of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, ½ cup of Kraft cheddar cheese crumbles, 1 cup of deli ham, 1/8 cup of diced green onions and, of course, 8 strips of bacon. Throw 'em all together, shape 'em like a football, and you have, quite possibly, the most perfect summation of Super Bowl-style eating right there.
The SuperSub
No list of the most over-the-top dishes would be complete without a SuperSub. Unfortunately, in order to get your hands on the seemingly-elegant/definitely-unnecessary six-foot Super Bowl sub pictured above -- and, yes, those are potato chips nestled on top of the sub itself; that move is utter brilliance -- you have to live in New York within No. 7 Sub's delivery range.
Brownie Desert Pizza
After ingesting so many meats and cheeses, it only makes sense to give your stomach a little break with a bit of sweet. Or, as is the case with the Super Bowl, a lot of sweet. Enter: The brownie pizza courtesy of KTVU, full of peanut butter cups, M&Ms, marshmallows and maraschino cherries.
The Big Game Snack Food Stadium
The Big Game Snack Food Stadium - Watch More Funny Videos
Possibly the greatest attempt at Super Bowl culinary insanity comes from the guys over at Break.com, who spent a few days in 2010 creating a replica of a football stadium with nothing but terrible junk food. It is a masterwork. They even went so far as to count how many calories their monstrosity contains. The final tally? 110,428 calories. That's enough to give the entire offensive line of the Baltimore Ravens a collective coronary. And that, my friends, is the true meaning of Super Bowl.
Images from Buzzfeed Food, NY GrubStreet, Food Family Finds, and KTVU.com.