20 ballpark foods you can make at home

Most stadiums simply serve bags of peanuts—just open and enjoy. But in southern stadiums (shout out to SEC college baseball teams!), you’ll find another option: boiled peanuts. It’s an acquired taste, but if you prefer that your peanuts include some preparation, try this recipe from She Wears Many Hats.

A big tray or basket of chicken fingers is our go-to order at stadiums, and sometimes at restaurants, too! They’re easy to eat, they please the kiddos, and we love the super crunchy deep-fried texture of stadium chicken tenders. It may seem tricky to mimic this meal at home, but it’s actually pretty simple, as explained by this recipe from Dinner at the Zoo. In fact, the hardest part is picking a dipping sauce.

Chili cheese dogs are even better at home because you can pick your preferred type of hot dog, customize your toppings, and not worry about getting this messy meal all over the shoes of the guy next to you. If you’re gonna go for it, swing for the fences with this devilish chili-cheese dog recipe from the Food Network.

If you want a type of hot dog that’s on the opposite end of the messy spectrum, then you can’t beat a corn dog. This self-contained snack-on-a-stick can be made at home with some boiled oil, and this recipe from Natasha’s Kitchen has some time-saving tips.

To be upfront: you’ll have to mutilate a whisk in order to make homemade cotton candy work—but if you can do this, then you won’t need a machine. Cotton candy, a.k.a. candy floss, also only involves a handful of ingredients, which are sugar, corn syrup, water, salt, flavoring, and coloring (optional). Good to Know has the goods.

“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks,” say the lyrics of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” But you don’t need to buy this snack at the ballpark or the store when you can make it yourself at home. (Also, where was the “please” in that lyric’s demand?) Find out the ingredient lineup with this Cracker Jack recipe from All Recipes.

We used to have to choose between deep-frying our pickles and baking them, with the former being very unhealthy and the latter not tasting quite right. Now that we have an air fryer, fried pickles are one of our favorite ballpark snacks-turned-homemade apps. Try this version from Vegetarian Mamma for a recipe with a lot of authenticity and only a little guilt.

When you’re at a baseball game, you don’t eat handfuls of little pretzels—you eat one giant soft pretzel that’s the size of the field. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but like each stadium’s field dimensions, each stadium’s pretzel size will vary. The point is: you can make soft pretzels at home, and you don’t even need one of those rotating wire racks inside of a big glass cube! Sally’s Baking Addiction has the recipe, and they even claim these are better than ballpark pretzels!

During a sunny day game, lemon-flavored ice treats are easily our favorite ballpark snack. They’re refreshingly frozen, they last for a while, and they’re not a bad bang for your buck—especially when the vendors deliver them right to your seat. The advantages of making them at home? This recipe from The Spruce Eats uses just five ingredients, takes five minutes to assemble (minus freezing time), and you can make a whole lot at once.

If you’re thinking a milkshake doesn’t belong in this list because it’s a beverage and not a food, then clearly you don’t like your milkshake extra thick. (The kind you might need a spoon for!) There’s something about the sweetness of a milkshake that balances out with the saltiness of pretty much every other item in this list, and we rarely pass up on a frothy frappe when we spot one at the concession stand. Mixers work best, but Delish has an easy recipe you can make in a blender.

You probably already know how to make nachos—it’s as simple as topping tortilla chips with meat, veggies, salsa, and melty cheese. But to make stadium-style nachos, you need cheese sauce. Skip the jarred queso and instead try this seriously addicting homemade nacho cheese sauce from Fifteen Spatulas.

We couldn’t include beer—a beverage—in this list... but how about some beer-battered onion rings? You can fry (or air fry!) a whole basket of these at home by either making them from scratch (like this recipe from Just a Taste) or simply buying your favorite frozen bagged variety.

A hot, fresh slice of pizza is a great food to eat at a ballgame...but NOT a great food to throw at your fellow spectators. Making your own pie at home ensures that the slice stays on your plate, and you can have seconds or thirds (or fourths!) without having to get back in the concession line! Choose classic cheese, or try a variation like these from Love & Lemons (which includes a link to a dough recipe!).

Stadiums serve popcorn by the bucketful, and they always seem to be coming up with more imaginative spins on this classic snack. We think buttered popcorn is best reserved for the movies, which is why we ask slightly sweet kettle corn to pinch-hit on game day. Leadoff with this easy version from Baking Mischief.

Instead of buying a bag of chips at the store to replace the bag of chips you’d normally buy at the stadium, try making your own potato chips at home! There are a variety of methods to make homemade chips, but when we make the call to the bullpen, we ask them to send in the air fryer. Mealthy has a recipe to help.

Has anyone else noticed the drastic increase in the availability of poutine—the cheese curd and gravy-covered French fry dish—over the last decade? We can’t explain it, but we don’t want to look a gift horse in its fry-filled mouth. Poutine is now offered at a lot of ballparks, but you can also make it at home with this “authentic Canadian” poutine recipe from Seasons & Suppers.

Pulled pork is one of our favorite types of sandwiches, and we enjoy making it at home as much as we enjoy ordering it at a ballgame or restaurant. That’s because a slow cooker makes it so easy (and so tasty!) and we don’t need to worry about grabbing 50 napkins from the concession stand in order to eat it. For a taste of the ballpark, try this recipe from Taste of Home.

Some stadiums have Polish sausages, some have Italian sausages, and some even have German brats. When you can’t order up a sausage as big as a Louisville Slugger, you can opt to make one safe at home, instead. Spend with Pennies has some tips for making Italian sausages on a grill, on the stovetop, or in an oven.

How did sliders only catch on in the last decade or so? (Especially with White Castle and Krystal both slinging mini burgers for the last century!) Sliders are snackable, shareable, and a stadium standard nowadays. They don’t just have to be cheeseburger sliders either—here are four different suggestions from Tasty.

Your imagination is the limit when making an ice cream sundae—but we usually start with the traditional toppings of hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry on top. For extra authenticity, grab these MLB team helmets to use as dishes. And as a bonus: when you eat at home, you don’t risk getting caught on camera with a face covered in ice cream like George Costanza.