Cooking for a crowd

[jscarbor]

We have a little family get together in Missouri at Table Rock Lake and need to come up with a dinner for 20-25 people. I'm used to smaller quantities so i need some help.

Any Ideas?

[annecros]

Well, you have come to the right place! eGullet members are nortorious planners, and you will have lots of advice.

What kind of facilities will you have? Are there grills outside? It's hot, so BBQ may be in order. Along with cold salads on the side. Day ahead sort of stuff on the sides.

Or did you have in mind something more formal?

[Shalmanese]

You can either do lots of things or a large quantities of a few things. This is really restricted by your cookware, if you have big pots, by all means go for the larger quantities to make your life easier. A quick rule of thumb for me is that the average person should be eating between a kilo and a kilo and a half (2 - 3 lbs), 200 - 300gm of which should be meat (1/2 - 2/3lb). If you plan your quantities out in this manner, everyone will be full but not stuffed.

Use a lot of bulk dishes to fill people up. Stuff like soups, salads, pasta, mashed potato, roasts etc. scale up really well to the size of pot you have.

In the end, 20 - 25 is not a lot. If you're used to cooking for a family, then you cook with about 6 portions normally. Double the quantities, put out 2 different main dishes and supplement with a salad and soup and you're about done.

[Pat Churchill]

I just cooked a dinner for 24 for my husband's birthday and I wanted to do as much in advance as I could so I would enjoy the party myself. On the night I just had to cook both lots of meat and warm a couple of the pre-cooked desserts. Most of the stuff apart from some of the salads, the tuna tataki and the meat prep were able to be done ahead and refrigerated or frozen.

My menu is on my website where most of the recipes are also available. We had a great night and with forward planning and making some things ahead, it was easy. I didn't have any help and the only thing I didn't make was the sushi platter. Only leftovers were a few bits of lamb for sandwiches the next day.

I had enough cutlery, dinner plates and wine glasses but I managed to get some fairly rigid square plastic disposable dessert plates and I also used disposables for the cheese. The cellar people brought beer glasses and ice along with the huge "coffin" for the wine, beer, juice and mixers.

We have a 30th wedding anniversary next month and I could seriously consider another party now I've limbered up!! The planning was half the job!

I guess I opted for Shalmanese's "many dishes" approach.

Good luck with it all.

[Tri2Cook]

One thing to keep in mind is the "not in a familiar kitchen" part. I did a dinner for 26 cooked onsite not too long ago and with proper planning and prep it's not at all difficult. My only mistake was overlooking a simple but important thing... I didn't test the onsite oven that I'd never used before. The meat was cooking more slowly than it should have been which reminded me I hadn't tested the oven so I tossed in my thermometer (yeah, it was with me and I still forgot to do it) and, sure enough, it was over 100 degrees off. It didn't cause a major problem in this case but it could have with some menus and was easily avoidable.

[JAZ]

One thing to keep in mind is the "not in a familiar kitchen" part.

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Definitely. Don't plan to make anything that requires specialized equipment, unless you plan to bring it yourself or are sure it's available. I made dinner for a family reunion in a condo kitchen that didn't have a blender (we bought a cheap one at the hardware store and gave it to my nephew), measuring cups or any knives but steak knives (I'd brought my own, fortunately). Oh, and only two of the four burners worked.

That's extreme, of course -- most rental kitchens are stocked better than that. But it will help if you're good at improvising. And if it's at all possible, bring your knives -- that's the one thing that you just can't improvise.

The menu I did was pork braised in tomatillo-green chile sauce, cheese enchiladas, chicken fajitas and a couple of southwestern salads. It worked pretty well, once we bought the blender.

[Shalmanese]

I had to keep this under wraps for a day but here's something I did last thursday.

The only equipment I brought with me was my knife, my apron and my wooden spoon. Everything else, I found on site.

Notice how many of the dishes were very easy to scale:

Salad: Just double the amounts

Soup: Just toss in more veggies, meat and stock

Risotto: Use more rice

Roast: Throw in another leg/serve less meat per person

Also, I cleverly used the relatively cheap soup and risotto to fill people up before the expensive lamb so I could provide some relatively fancy ingredients while at the same time, sticking to a very affordable budget. In the end, it took barely any time at all to whip all of that up and it was all extremely delicious.

[jscarbor]

I feel like the kitchen will be adequetly supplied with the below avg tools supplied by a hotel. The last time we did this we had the use of the "mess hall" so it was pretty good. Knives are pretty much horrid.

Funny thing is I was thinking about doing a pork braised in a verde salsa. I was thinking a little beer in that braise would be good also and a friend of mine said white choc is what he uses in a pork verde braise? I am a little worried about the quality of tortillas and if I can find tomatillos or even a decent chili verde salsa? Maybe some beans and a salad and I am good to go?

[jscarbor]

BTW, this is going to be a really casual group.