8 World Cup Meals To Whip Up At Home

The Couch is not a culinary blog, because I'm not artsy enough to take staged, mouthwatering pictures of food, and I don't have enough time to try to come up with new ways to express my love for certain cuisines. However, I'm taking advantage of the Sports banner to highlight a culinary project; after all, the World Cup is of course a sporting event, but it's more than that. It's a multicultural phenomenon!

Cooking is another one of my passions-- I say "passions" because I love doing it, and saying "hobbies" would make it seem like I cook impressive meals for people more than I truly do. Different nations and cultures have also always fascinated me, and thus, for the last several major soccer tournaments I've created a fun project for myself wherein I formulate dinner menus based on the nations that are playing that day. I have done the same for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, though admittedly a little late on. The tournament's start snuck up on me!

Below are 8 World Cup meals that are based on the 8 groups of national teams. All 32 national teams are represented in these meals, some in both food and drink. I tried to do an established "national dish" from each country, but due to my obsessive need to apply the same meal format to each group, some nations' foods might be less ubiquitous in their home country than their peers' representations.

Every meal has an entrée, and to quote my girlfriend (who says this sarcastically, to mock me), "it's not an entrée unless there's meat!" That said, in an homage to my vegetarian parents, I have also always tried to ensure a vegetarian entrée is present as well, in addition to a side dish, salad or soup that is veggie-friendly. And of course, no adult's meal is complete without a couple grown-up beverage options, and no human's meal is fully complete without a rich dessert. I've included hyperlinks to the recipes I've found online; anything not hyperlinked is something available already in stores!

Enjoy! And please do tell me if you end up cooking some of these on your own.

Group A

Entree-Meat

Chivito [Uruguay]

Entree-Veggie

Kabsa [Saudi Arabia]

Veggie-Friendly Side

Ful medames [Egypt]

Adult Beverage Options

Tannat wine [Uruguay]

Vodka [Russia]

Dessert