RBR Tailgating: Enter the Johnsonville recipe contest for tickets to the SEC Championship Game!

I get a surprising amount of promotional emails championing one foodstuff or another. Most are from home start up companies; a couple comes up with a blend of spices that they think is the greatest thing since sliced bread and ask me to include their mixture in a tailgate post with contact information so that the sbnation Bama horde can call/email/text order after order of their fabulous product. I love that stuff and those that put themselves out there. Seriously.

People who look at the world and see a deficiency or a niche that they believe benefits from their attention are my favorite kinds of people. I own a My Pillow.

But this isn’t a retail space. We can’t do ads. That said, every once in a while I get an interesting press release. This one should be shared with you great unwashed.

It’s from Johnsonville, so I’m less concerned about this seeming like I’m shilling for a particular company as they’ve been selling to a satisfied public since three years before the sun finally set on the British Empire. My imprimatur isn’t going to register a rounding error on their bottom line.

All that “I’m not a corporate shill,” nonsense aside, this looks like a pretty cool contest.

Anyone who wants to participate has until Nov. 5 at 11:59 PM, per the press release, to enter their best and most likely to please sausage based tailgate recipe. The rules are here, but other than the obvious admonitions against copy and pasting something from Martha Stewart or Guy Fieri, it’s pretty wide open. The press release does say that “The Finalists will receive the glory of showing off their tailgating mastery at a live Throwdown event with the Johnsonville Big Taste Grill the morning of the 2019 SEC Championship Game,” so I infer that whatever recipe you enter needs to be grilled, but as limiting principles go, that’s pretty benign. The chance of making it to the finals with a poached sausage would be slight at best, rules or no. Grilled it is.

The good people at Johnsonville are going to cull two from the crowd of entrants and pit them against each other before a celebrity judge, and this is the best part. The judge is Shaun Alexander. That means no matter how much better a winning Bama fan’s recipe is we can still bask in the glory that is LSU fans complaining that the fix was in and Birmingham made the call.

To be clear, if you are either of the two finalists, you get two tickets, hotels, and a bit of spending cash. Second place gets tickets too.

There’s another category called Ultimate Fan Favorite, the winner of which is decided by public vote. You don’t get to go to the game, but you get a bunch of free meat, so nicely done.

As a competition gauge, they offer the Kick off Sausage Dip. This is the “go-to sausage recipe,” favored by Alexander, which looks pretty darn good. It’s a skillet dish, but could be done on a grill if you’re clever. Maybe there’s wiggle room, but I’m still betting on grilling as the preferred and most favored by the judges method.

Entry is free. I’m going full boar with grilled sourdough brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt topped with sliced hot Italian sausage and smothered in mashed grilled tomatoes with flat leaf, raw garlic, red pepper flakes, and oregano. Look upon mine and despair. I’m pretty sure that after all of this, Shaun and I are going to be best friends.

If you enter and make it past the initial stages, let us know. Make some noise. RBR can’t help with the final selection as that’s up to the sausage kings/queens of Sheboygan Falls, but we can mobilize on the fan favorite vote front. Free meat, guys (and gals.)