Cooking For Crowds

Cooking for crowds can be frightening, but with the right gear and satisfactory preparation, you can pull it off. If you are cooking for as few as 10 or up to a hundred folk, the key is to be safe, arranged, and prepared.

Play It Safe

You should be conscious of the health hazards related to cooking for crowds. Hot food not only needs to be cooked to a certain temperature, it needs to remain at that temperature till it is served.

In a similar fashion , cold food needs to be kept cold till you serve it. When food is improperly cooked or cooled, bacteria can grow and reproduce, sickening everyone who eats the contaminated food.

What's a cook to do? 

When you are cooking for crowds, use instant-read thermometers to monitor the temperatures of your big dishes to make certain no-one gets sick. If you are cooking ahead for a bunch, and you want to cool, say, a big pot of soup or broth, ladle the hot liquid into many tiny boxes so each container can cool faster, inhibiting bacteria from forming.

Quantities Rule Of Ten

At large dinners and potlucks, it sort of feels like there's far too much food, or not enough food. Attempt to have adequate food by planning quantities ahead of time. When you are cooking for crowds and you must determine if you need to double, triple, or quadruple you recipe, follow the catering Rule of 10 .

When cooking for crowds of 10 adults, serve:

 4 pounds of beef 3 pounds of potatoes ( to make potato salad )
One pound of dry pasta ( to make pasta salad )
2 to three pounds of pre-cooked, peeled shrimp
 2 pounds of clams or mussels
One-half gallon of soup or stew, if served as an appetizer
One gallon of soup or stew if served as a main dish
 2 pounds green salad, or 3 giant heads of lettuce
 3 cups of salad dressing for all that salad.
20 cocktails an hour
One gallon of punch

If you are cooking for crowds of ten that loves cocktails, do not forget to have available 10 pounds of ice and a selection of soft drinks. The standard cocktail uses 1.5 oz of spirits, so plan on getting sixteen cocktails from each 750 ml bottle.

Cooking Supplies 

Finding cooking supplies, pans, bowls, and dishes when you are cooking for crowds could be a challenge. You can purchase huge, disposable foil baking pans, but they can be insubstantial when stuffed with hot, heavy food. Your best shot is to hire pro cooking supplies, including massive coolers, so you have all the supplies you want and you can focus on the food.

Stay Organized

Things can get pretty funny when you are cooking for crowds, so make an inventory of every dish you're serving and check the list often. You do not want to have the party end and the guests return home to find that you have 6 gallons of uneaten potato salad in the cooler because you didn't remember to serve it. Being prepared and arranged and getting the right cooking supplies takes the guesswork out of cooking for crowds. When the party's over, start your shoes, put your feet up and congratulate yourself on a job well.