Over the Plate is MLB.TV’s new show for the food-obsessed fan

We get it: You love baseball, but you also love to stuff your face with the greatest, tastiest and most outrageous foodstuffs out there. One of the great things about going to a ballgame these days is that while you can still get your hot dog and Cracker Jack, you can also get plenty of other remarkable treats, from the toasted grasshoppers you can munch on in Seattle’s T-Mobile Park to the takoyaki, delicious fried octopus balls originally from Osaka, Japan, that you can get inside Dodger Stadium.

In the first episode, celebrity chef Graham Elliot — who previously helped walk us through a few of Wade Boggs’ chicken recipes — speaks with Cris Vázquez, the executive chef of the Texas Rangers, about some of the special offerings inside Globe Life Park. If you’re able to look at the brisket egg rolls without ordering an early lunch, well, then you’re a stronger person than I am.

Of course, Texas isn’t the only place to get some good ‘cue. Mets legend Mookie Wilson and his company, Legacy Catering, also know their way around a smoker. (Heck, Wilson and his brothers even went and designed their own smoker out of an old boat trailer.

“Mom taught us all how to cook. She was a cook in the public school system for ages, so we all started to cook for her. So when we started to do the business, we figured out what we were going to call it. So we said, let’s cook in honor of our mother and that’s where [the name] Legacy came in,” Wilson said.

Family is a running theme when it comes to food, and that’s no different in LaTroy Hawkins’ house. The former reliever teamed up with his daughter and aspiring chef, Troi Hawkins, for an at-home steak dinner.

When asking his daughter where she learned to cook, Troi answered quickly: “From watching Mom,” she joked, before adding that her “competitiveness came from you.”

Next up, Tigers outfielder Mark Canha is well known for his love of food, posting his tasting adventures on his instagram, @bigleaguefoodie. So, Canha sat down with celebrity chef Adam Sobel to discuss some of his favorites while sampling some delicacies from the New York deli icon Barney Greengrass.

“My dad was really into food when I was a kid. He traveled for work and he would go to places all over Europe and stuff,” Canha said. “He was in sales and he would travel to all these places and he would come home and he would try and cook the things he ate overseas. As a kid, I was exposed to a lot of stuff that kids aren’t usually exposed to.”

Finally, Sobel and Canha try to “turn the tables” — looking to stump each other with a few food-and-baseball terms to wrap up the episode. Some of the baseball terms were even new to Canha, so don’t feel bad if you can’t get them all, either.

For the full episode and for all the other MLB.TV programs, click here.