Gridiron Grinder — The Perfect Tailgating Sub! {College Football Saturday Tailgate}

Wel­come to week 6 of the Col­lege Foot­ball Sat­ur­day Tail­gate & link party! It’s game day and boy are there some BIG games on today! For the sec­ond week in a row, Nebraska takes cen­ter stage as the ABC night game matched up against the Ohio State Buck­eyes! In last week’s game against Wis­con­sin, my Huskers came from behind to win. One of the biggest come­back in school his­tory, sec­ond only to last year’s Ohio State game!! So, need­less to say, I’m a bit ner­vous for tonight’s game! No mat­ter who you’re watch­ing & cheer­ing for today though, this grid­iron grinder makes the per­fect tail­gat­ing food. Instead of buy­ing big sub sand­wiches, it’s so easy to make your own and take to your tail­gate party!

Ingre­di­ents:

• 1 large french bread loaf
• 8–10 slices of pro­volone cheese
• 15–20 slices hard salami
• 1/2 pound ham
• *optional 1 small pack­age pepperonis
• dress­ings of your choice (let­tuce, tomato, olives, pep­per­oncini, mayo, mus­tard, ital­ian dress­ing, etc).

To make:

Cut french bread loaf in half, so you have an entire top half and bot­tom half. Put down the slices of pro­volone, cov­er­ing the entire bot­tom of the sand­wich. Then, layer on the meats. You can add pep­per­oni to make it more like an Ital­ian sub, but this time I left them out (well, really you could do any meat com­bi­na­tion you want). We just had salami with ham on top. I pre­fer using some sort of “fancy” meats from the deli. The first time I made it I found a pesto crusted ham that was deli­cious. But, I couldn’t find any­thing too unique in the deli this time and just set­tled for a pack­age of apple­wood smoked ham lunch­meat.
If you’re headed out to tail­gate or tak­ing it to someone’s house, then just put the sand­wich top on and put the entire thing back in the french bread pack­ag­ing (makes for easy trans­port). We took ours to a friends house, so I just took over top­pings in baggies–like chopped let­tuce & sliced toma­toes. Once it was time to eat, then I just opened the sand­wich back up & dressed it. Then, just slice it up & serve! Easy to make, easy to trans­port, plus less expen­sive & fresher than get­ting subs or buy­ing the pre-made gro­cery store ver­sions! Super yum! Now, it’s YOUR turn. I can’t wait to see your football-related food, fun & creativity!

 Col­lege Foot­ball Sat­ur­day Tail­gate Link Party