Having Friends Over for Match Day? These Are the Ideal Refreshments

The Premier League season is finally underway – and although nothing can quite compare to attending a match in person, inviting some of your best friends over and watching the game at home can be equally exciting in its own right. It’s also a lot less expensive.

The one thing about having friends over for match day, though, is that you’ve got to provide refreshments if you want the event to be as much fun as it can be. The average football match lasts somewhere in the range of two hours – and if you want the day to feel like a real event, chances are that your friends are going to arrive before the match starts and won’t leave until well after it’s over. Between laughing with one another and yelling at the TV, people are going to get pretty hungry.

You could always do what most people do – grab some beer from the corner store and call for a pizza or two. We think that hosting a viewing party on match day is a pretty big deal, though, and that calls for a bit of extra effort if you want to make the event really special. 

Do you want to make your next match day at home an event that your friends will be talking about for the rest of the season? Make it complete with these perfect refreshments.

Local Beer

Football and beer have always gone hand in hand. As with certain other things in life, there really is no such thing as a bad beer – just varying degrees of good. If you really want to get people talking, though, try being creative with your beer selection and buying some beers from microbreweries that are local to the two teams facing off that day. Every major British city has at least one great brewery, and a match day viewing party is a great excuse to sample some of those local brews and debate their pros and cons.

Vapes

If you don’t smoke yourself, it’s possible that you might overlook the needs of the smokers in your group when planning a viewing party for match day. A significant number of people still smoke, though, and it’s going to be a major downer for those people if they have to choose between experiencing nicotine fits or stepping outside during what could be a key moment in the match. Instead of making them choose, grab some Raz vapes and hand them out to the nicotine users in your group when they arrive. Vaping doesn’t stain walls or leave a lingering smell like smoking does, so you can feel free to let your friends vape indoors. Who knows – if you let your friends take the vapes home with them, it could ultimately lead to them giving up smoking entirely.

Fish and Chips

After pizza, the second most popular delivery food in the UK is fish and chips – and while we certainly wouldn’t fault you for just calling out for delivery before the game starts, you can actually make your own fish and chips at home with relative ease in just a few minutes – and the result will probably be far tastier. Just grab some frozen chips from the supermarket and some breaded frozen fish or scampi. Check the ingredients before buying, though, because a lot of the breaded scampi sold in supermarkets is actually cut with flavourless catfish. 

Get a heavy-bottomed stockpot and fill it a little past the halfway point with oil. Check the temperature of the oil with a probe thermometer and drop in a serving of fish or chips. You can fry both together, but you might get a better result if you fry them separately to ensure they both reach the perfect state of doneness. Don’t put too much in the pot at once, or the oil’s temperature will drop. Use a slotted spoon to stir the items and prevent them from sticking together. The chips are done when they’re golden, and the fish is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit. 

For an extra touch of authenticity, serve the fish and chips on newspaper, which helps to blot away some of the oil. Provide lemon wedges, malt vinegar and tartar sauce, and your guests can dress the food to their liking.

Home-Made Pizza

Have you ever tried making your own pizza? If you haven’t, you’re going to be amazed by how simple it really is – as long as you don’t have to make the dough, which is the hard part. Cooking a thin-crust pizza only takes a few minutes if your ingredients are prepared in advance, so it’s easy to have your guests served and happy before the game starts.

The trick to making home-made pizza as easy as it can be is having the dough already made. Your local supermarket may have some ready-to-go dough balls in a refrigerator near the bakery section. If you don’t have any luck there, call around to some local non-chain pizza places. You’d be surprised how many of them will be willing to sell their dough as an off-menu item. The dough may be frozen, so you’ll want to thaw it overnight before the game. You don’t want to make the pizzas until the dough has come all the way up to room temperature because the dough won’t stretch when it’s cold.

Here’s what you’ll need to do to prepare your other ingredients.

• Buy an assortment of cheeses such as mozzarella, provolone and parmesan and mix them together. You can buy pre-shredded cheeses, but those tend to have extra ingredients to prevent clumping and mould growth. You’ll get a better result if you shred the cheese yourself. You can do this the night before; store the cheese in the refrigerator in a zip-top bag.
• Prepare your sauce. Get a few large cans of whole tomatoes and put the tomatoes in a mesh strainer. Poke the tomatoes with a fork and leave them in the strainer for at least an hour to drain as much of the water as possible. You can also press paper towels over the tomatoes to help with the water removal. Once most of the water has drained, blitz the tomatoes with a little salt and oregano. You can also do this the night before.
• Prepare your toppings. You can buy an assortment of sliced cured meats from a local supermarket or deli. Select some of your favourite vegetables and slice them thinly. Veggies are tastiest if you eat them right after cutting them, so you’ll have the best result if you do this immediately before making your pizzas.

When it comes to cooking, it’s helpful if you have a pizza stone that you can put in your oven. The stone helps to prevent heat loss when you open the oven, which is important because Neapolitan pizza cooks best at very high temperatures. It’s also helpful to have a pizza screen, which makes it easy to transfer your pizzas to and from the oven. The screen also prevents the bottom of the pizza from getting soggy.

Since your ingredients should already be prepared, making the pizzas is a simple matter of assembling and waiting. Here’s how to do it.

• Preheat your oven to the highest temperature it allows. You’ll usually want to start the oven at least a half hour before you begin cooking, especially if you’re using a pizza stone. This helps to ensure that you can open the oven with minimal heat loss.
• Dust your work surface with a generous amount of flour to help prevent sticking. Semolina flour is ideal.
• Put a dough ball on the work surface and press down gently with your fingertips or knuckles to form a disc. Begin rotating the disc with both hands while moving your hands outward until the disc reaches the desired diameter and thinness.
• Add your sauce, cheese and toppings. Put plenty of cheese near the edge of the pizza because it’ll move toward the middle when it melts.
• Transfer the pizza to a pizza screen and put it in the oven. The pizza is done when it reaches your desired brownness. Watch it closely; it’ll only take a few minutes.
• Let the pizza rest for a minute or so before cutting it.