Loyal Scaiaholics understand how seriously I take my responsibility, as an Edward R. Murrow Award winning journalist, to try new foods at stadiums.
As such, I trudged to AT&T Stadium when they started cooking Thanksgiving dinner. The Cowboys host Buffalo this Thursday.
Scaiaholics will also recall last year when the Legends at AT&T Stadium staff cooked up dressing, shoved it into a waffle iron and made dressing waffles that looked like Texas.
“Oh, they’ll never top that,” you shouted at your computer screen.
This year, they have done away with the stuffing-waffle.
“What?!” you’re now shouting as bits of dressing shoot out your mouth.
Instead, the focus was on walkability. They’re cooking dinner for 90,000 football fans, after all, and many will not be lined up around a majestic-looking table [although I wouldn’t hate seeing John Madden show up at the end of a dining room table set up at the 50 yard line clutching a knife and carving fork].
This year, the concessions chefs devised the “Thanksgiving Hand Pie.” This features Thanksgiving dinner in individual pie form, not unlike those li’l Hostess fruit pies that don’t, technically, have any fruit inside.
The Thanksgiving Hand Pies, however, have quite a few real ingredients: They are made with “layers of savory herb dressing, fresh cranberry sauce, green beans, sweet potatoes, oven-roasted turkey breast and turkey giblet gravy enclosed in a flaky pie crust.”
Because a reporter asks, I really did talk to the chef about how they managed to get gravy in there so it wouldn’t dribble all over you as you ate or make the crust soggy. I also just learned I could embed audio in these blogs, so I’m very excited to include that discussion here instead of a link to another site:
Pictured above is also Thanksgiving dinner in bowl-form. You can get that with either turkey or ham. The bowl comes with green beans and cranberry sauce, also; the dressing is still savory, and the gravy is lovingly dribbled on top [Note: I editorialized, adding that the gravy would be dribbled lovingly myself]. But the bowl comes with Cowboys mac-n-cheese.
They started R&D on these projects before the season started, figuring out which layer would add the most insouciant kick to the layers above and below.
They also started R&D on the pies. At the beginning of the season, the Legends team introduced a bourbon chocolate pecan pie. The chef says it’s become very popular. Naturally, for the good of the consumer, I went to try it out.
The Bourbon Chocolate Pecan situation is near the top of the picture. Around the edges are carefully positioned bits of chocolate. And graham crackers atop the pumpkin pie.
…and here’s what the pies looked like after they were handed to me. They may have been more majestic before I got at ’em.
The crew is baking a thousand large pies and six thousand mini pies.
They’ll top those pies with 140 gallons of whipped cream.
Here are some stats on how much food they’ll serve at AT&T Stadium Thursday:
