Tips for cooking meals for a bunch of people?

[FabulousFoodie]

I once singlehandedly cooked for 21 people. If you're regularly cooking for a lot of people, investing in large pans definitely helps. I have an enormous paella pan which I can use for pasta sauces as well as any frying. I also have an industrial sized baking tray (like the sort used for school dinners).

Soup starters are usually pretty easy because they can be prepared hours in advance and just need to be warmed through. Things like bruschetta can be served cold in the summer so just need assembling.

When choosing the components for your main meal, do it with the cooking space in mind, for example if you're making a steak on the hob, you might want to consider making an accompaniment which goes in the oven, such as roasted vegetables. The idea of doing a larger joint of meat which people can help themselves to, as suggested above, is a good one, but you then have to consider whether you can fit anything else in the oven, and if not, make things on the hob.

[Mad Cook]

Originally Posted by ed-adams

Let me give you a little background first.


My fiance and I have decided to learn how to cook a couple months back and it's been going great so far. We obviously started with beginner-level recipes and made quite a few good dishes (steak, chicken breasts filled with mozarella and wrapped in bacon, a whole lot of pasta, etc).


In an effort to give back a little (and, hey, show off) every Sunday we cook for our parents (it's a small country, easy to get together).


My question is this: So far it's been quite difficult to manage cooking for 6 people at once (me, her, my parents, her parents). Sometimes I don't have enough burners, the food doesn't fit into the pan at once, so some of it is a bit colder than the rest of the food, etc. It's a headache. For example, I needed to cook six steaks, but only two fit in the pan. so I had to cook two, remove them, cook two more, remove them, and all the while, the first two are getting colder. You know what I mean?


Now, my fiance has asked me to do a meal which includes a first course and a main one. This blew my mind. It's not that I don't know how to cook these things; it's that I know I'm gonna explode under the pressure.


Short of skipping on the first course myself to continue cooking the main course (or cancelling the wedding and finding a new wife :p), what tips can you give me for managing such (relatively) large endeavors?

First of all, don't get too ambitious. It's better to serve something simple but beautifully cooked than something very ambitious which turns out to be a disaster. And you don't want to be so exhausted and flustered with the cooking that you can't enjoy the party.

Malta is very warm at this time of year so what about a salad for the first course - there is wonderful fish and shellfish available in Malta. I'm sure you must know that 1970s old faithful, prawn cocktail, which has become fashionable of late, albeit in a slightly modernised version. Or what about egg mayonnaise, perhaps with a curried mayonnaise, served on a bed of salad greens? You can do a lot of the prep in advance before you get down to the nitty-gritty of the cooking.

For your main course try and choose something that you can prepare the day before, refridgerate and put in the oven in time for the lunch party - vegetable or shell-fish lasagne, moussaka, chicken cacciatore, or if you wanted a cold main course, chicken veronique.

Don't give up

[Oldvine]

I think you need to cook what works with the equipment you have or get some additional equipment to cook new menus you want to add. As a parent to an adult child and very appreciative, I still don't want to eat in shifts.