Does anyone know how to host a fish fry?

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sherin65

Assistant Cook
Joined
Sep 1, 2006
Messages
31
Location
Indiana
Our church is considering hosting a fish fry on Good Friday. The problem is none of us have ever been part of the planning of one.

Can anyone give us some instructions, tips, links to directions and recipes, etc?

Sher
 
I have hosted many fish fry's.. Question what kind of equipment do you have??
Number of fryers home models or professional fryers ? warming oven?? chaffing dishes..
What kind of sides ?? PM me for some help if you want
 
I'd recommend checking with your local fire department. In our area our fire departments regularly host fish fries as fundraisers. If that's the case in your area, they will be a wealth of information. You might even be able to borrow equipment from them.
 
Hi Sherin65,
As Uncle Bob says - how many people and what kind of fish? One of the most important issues is what type(s) of cooking aplliances will you have to hand? Also, how many people do you have available to prepare and cook the fish on Good Friday? Are you thinking about serving any accompaniments like tartare sauce, ketchup etc?

Thus there are a number of questions which need to be answered:
1. How many people will you be serving on the day?
2. What time of day will you be serving the fish as this affects your preparation time?
3. What kind of fish will you be able to get hold of - white fish? salmon? tuna? shellfish like mussels or prawns?
4. Where will YOU be cooking the fish?
5. What appliances will you have on hand?
6. Will you be able to get hold of some additional (domestic) deep-fat fryers?
7. How many people will be helping you on Good Friday?
8. Will you be serving anything else with the fish?
9. What sauces will/could you serve?
10. How much money do you have to spend on the event?
11. Does anyone have any allergies?

In other words, I would like a lot more information before I could offer advice. For example, it may be that you would be advised to make fish cakes which could be cooked in the oven if top stove space is limited and these could be prepared in advance. Equally, if anyone has a gluten allergy it may be that you need to think about what you might use in a batter or in an egg and crumb dressing.

Sauces like tartare sauce are easy to make yourself. You could serve a Marie Rose sauce - easy to make yourself, or something like a salsa, pesto mayonnaise, hot cucumber sauce (recipe if you would like it), tzatziki etc.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Archiduc
 
1. How many people will you be serving on the day? 150 +-
2. What time of day will you be serving the fish as this affects your preparation time? 4-7 pm.
3. What kind of fish will you be able to get hold of - white fish? salmon? tuna? shellfish like mussels or prawns? Don't know at all yet, need help on this, most likely some kind of whitefish maybe cod, perch.?
4. Where will YOU be cooking the fish? In our banquet hall kitchen
5. What appliances will you have on hand? Commercial fryers, ovens, top burners, large double door fridge, small freezer.
6. Will you be able to get hold of some additional (domestic) deep-fat fryers?? I think what we have should be sufficient.
7. How many people will be helping you on Good Friday? Volunteers aren't a problem, probably 15-20 ppl.
8. Will you be serving anything else with the fish? What goes best? I was thinking slaw, hushpuppies, maybe chips or fries(but fries are more costly), desserts.
9. What sauces will/could you serve? Tarter sauce, perhaps some malt vinegar, ketchup.
10. How much money do you have to spend on the event? We can use church funds to buy whatever we need, I just need to know how to access the fish at a good price and we need to make the dinner price good enough to draw people in and still make a profit for the youth group.
11. Does anyone have any allergies? I imagine so....I heard frying in peanut oil was a good choice but I did think about peanut allergies being a cause for concern so perhaps we should go with canola oil? I'm not sure.

I'll try to answer these and the other questions posted.

Equipment: We have a full commercial cooking kitchen in our banquet hall. Two full size deep fryers (I'm guessing using one for fish only and the other for fries or hushpuppies), we have chaffing dishes with racks, plates, etc. Equipment won't be a problem.

Since we haven't done this before I think we could expect about 150 people.

I'm looking specifically for....
What kind of fish would be best? Do we batter it ourselves or buy it prebattered?
What kind of oil should we use?
What sides would be favored?
Where to check for the best prices on fish?
How to estimate portions for our crowd of 150 ish?
What size portion to serve? 2 pieces per dinner? AYCE?
Should beverages be priced in addition to the dinner cost? Should we consider coffee and lemonade included and charge for cans of soda?
Should we expect a large number of "togo" orders?

Sher
 
Here is how we do it. We try to guess how many people. buy fish for 25% more(we wouldn't want to run out!).

We use our turkey fryers and buy our fish from a food supply place(GFS for us). GFS has GREAT frozen fish!!! we use White fish or Cod, depending on prices at the time. The food supply house should also have fryer oil for a good price. Portions.. ask the food suppliers. they have charts to help you figure all that out, including how much sides, etc.

yes you will need to supply drinks.. cost--you have to figure what profit(if any ) you want. You can just use tea, lemonade, water..

Bread your own. Try and have 2 fryers. One for plain fried, one for spicy fried. We also provide some other non-fish proteins for people who have non-fish eating people in their family.

Make up a huge bowl of cole slaw.

For our potatoes, we use oven fry's since the fryers are busy... Have plenty of tartar sauce and some malt vinegar..
 
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