Philly Cheese Steaks are a delicious and unique addition to your tailgate.  Few things are as pleasing as a big juicy steak sub, and if you follow this recipe you'll feel like you're on South Street.

This recipe calls for cooking the meat in advance in plain, onion, and mushroom batches, then mixing them together and re-grilling them at the tailgate.  This allows you to serve up hot subs with custom ingredients.  This will make enough for about 10 big subs.

Time Required:  One hour prep time at home, plus a few minutes per sub at the tailgate

Skill Required:  Moderate to intermediate cooking skills needed

Ingredients for preparation at home:

3 pounds of rib-eye steak.  This can be bought frozen, but do not buy anything of the "minute steak" variety.  Make sure it has real cuts of meat with fat marbled in.  You can also buy fresh thin-sliced rib eye, which is a little harder to chop up for the correct texture.

2 onions

2 cans of sliced mushrooms

Salt, pepper, & garlic

Butter

Ingredients needed at the tailgate:

A flat grilling surface; a cast-iron griddle works best

Butter

Your choice of cheese; Provolone, American, and gooey nacho-type "cheez" work best

High-quality sub rolls; this is a critical item!

Hot peppers, lettuce, and tomato

Ketchup and mayonnaise

Steps at home:

Slice the onions and set aside

Divide your rib eye roughly into three batches; you'll be making a batch heavy in onions, a batch heavy in mushrooms, and a plain batch.  Adjust the sizes according to your guests' tastes

Melt some butter in a large pan

Add some rib eye and season with salt, pepper, and garlic

Cook until the meat is brown and cooked through, but not do not overcook; you'll be cooking this again at the tailgate.  Cook only as much as will fit in the pan, you'll make several batches

Repeat until your designated "plain" rib eye is cooked, and set all of it aside to cool

Melt butter in the pan and add onions. 

Add salt, pepper, and garlic and sauté the onions until slightly translucent.

Add your designated "onion" rib eye and cook until brown.  Remove and cool when finished

Melt butter in the pan and add mushrooms

Add salt, pepper, and garlic and sauté for a minute or two

Add the remaining rib eye and cook until brown.  Remove and set aside to cool

Place each type of meat in a zip-lock bag or other container for transporting to the tailgate.  You can refrigerate the meat if needed

Steps at the tailgate:

Heat your griddle on a charcoal or gas grill (or by any other means) and melt some butter.  We have found that a hibachi-type grill is the perfect size for a cast-iron griddle (see picture above)

Add rib eye as needed; mix the types of meat to create plain, onion, mushroom, or combination steaks.  You can also add hot peppers to any order

The meat should heat through fairly quickly as you toss it on the griddle

Add cheese, if desired, until it melts

Serve on a sub roll with desired fixins