Tips: Cooking for a Crowd
Serious Eats community member and food blogger Kevin Weeks shares his tips on cooking for a crowd at NPR's Kitchen Window: "Catering a large event yourself isn't impossible. But it does require careful, even obsessive, planning. My cutoff point is 25 guests unless I have access to a professional kitchen and have professional help. And even then I'll only do it with the right menu.”
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3 Comments:
Your points for cooking for a crowd are right on. I cook lunch bi-weekly for 40 people and my major obstacles were fridge space when I prepared most of the menu the day before, so I purchased a 2nd fridge. Then re- heating the next day and having enough burners and oven space. I do keep track of food quanities on a spreadsheet in my computer. When planning the menu with the clients I keep in mind the re heating factor and often use a big "cooker" to give me an option to heat one of the items. But somehow every time I do my lunches I pull it all together and everyone loves it! Hooray...
joanpieroni2 at 10:06PM on 05/22/08
A lot of what he says is true and tested. I often say I designed my kitchen for work space. I don't use professional help, I just order people around LOL. Although I have to say in my mid twenties I had great parties in my old 4 burner tiny kitchen with the same list of suspects and 40 or so people.
I have cooked for 45 in my (custom) kitchen. I am obesessive in my planning (some of you know this already) and deliberate in wine pairings and menu. I go with what works. When entertaining large amounts of people you can not try something new unless you do a test run first. Not everything is meant to be made in large batches. Things that are extremely labor intensive and time consuming need to be done beforehand unless you have many sets of hands. Best piece of advise I can give anyone wanting to entertain a crowd is have a plan B for everything. Just incase something goes wrong, any part of it, have a back up something.
JerzeeTomato at 10:29PM on 05/22/08
Thanks for the mention. You can download use this photo if you wish: http://seriouslygood.kdweeks.com/weeks-crowd-group-550.JPG
Kevin at 12:03PM on 05/23/08