Posts Tagged ‘cooking for crowds’

In the last two months I’ve shared some tips on cooking for a crowd. I’d like to wrap up this three part series today with a discussion on keeping records. I suspect that most people don’t keep records. (I am just trying to get into the habit myself.) But you need to try it and see how easy it really is. This one trick can dramatically boost your confidence for future events PLUS eliminate frustration when you’re trying to go by memory and can’t remember half of what you did three months ago.

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In a recent post, I talked about the importance of good planning when you’re cooking for a crowd. Maybe I am a bit imbalanced since I always like to have my chickens lined up, but I think my concerns were valid.

Today I want to move on to my second tip on cooking for a crowd: using decent equipment.

So you are interested in catering for money, fund-raising for non-profits, or being the honored chef at family gatherings, graduation parties, church picnics, or some sort of crowd setting. You are serious about cooking and don’t mind investing in your dream. A good smoker or grill is a solid investment and the best way to achieve your goals.

When it comes to the equipment, here is what you need to think about:

1. Size of cooking space/amount of output.
2. Ease of use.
3. Ease of cleanup.
4. Lifetime value for your investment.

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A couple weeks ago, we had a lot of fun cooking for Open House at Cold Springs Garden Center, the other company Marlin owns with my Dad. The event lasted two days, Friday and Saturday. We served homemade donuts and coffee in the mornings. Around 10:30 we started giving away grilled sausage sandwiches and barbecue samples.

In this post, I want to share some of the memories from those two days and entice you with ribs, wings, chicken, and Amish-made sausage from Lancaster County, PA.

We grilled the sausages on a BBQ42 Chicken Cooker. For samples, we grilled party wings with the sausage and smoked ribs (how growling delicious!) and split chicken breasts on my Meadow Creek SQ36 Smoker.

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Last week Meadow Creek had their annual dealer meeting and Open House. Marlin and I always make sure we’re there for the dealer meeting and at least part of the open house.

It was absolutely great being there again. I came home with some new inspiration, as well as confirmations of things I need to be doing to sell more Meadow Creek equipment. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t promote schemes that trick people into buying our smokers and grills. I’ll leave that for the schematic tricksters who are content with forcing people to make decisions.

My goal is to educate the people in my market and help them achieve their goals. One of those goals is to grill chicken for events, such as fund-raisers, auctions, open houses, weddings, etc. Not just grill chicken, but chicken that is perfect from head to toe. Fully cooked on the bone, but not dried out on the surface. Cooked uniformly from east to west, north to south. Not just perfect chicken, but huge amounts of it.

Does this sound like your dream? Meadow Creek chicken cookers make it easy as pie to grill perfect chicken for hundreds. It was fun to see it done again last week.

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Some of the people who took my survey a few months back asked for help in cooking for crowds. Today I want to share some key pointers regarding cooking for crowds.

Maybe you’re wondering…

• How much should I cook per person?
• What should I charge per plate?
• What size smoker or grill will cook for x people at one shot?
• Which pit will make this whole project fun and easy?

I really doubt you are looking for more stress in your life, so your best option is to get your birds (and pigs) all lined up before the time comes, so you can proceed with confidence.

Imagine knowing up front…

• “I am cooking the right amount of food, just a little extra to be safe.”
• “I know how much this event will cost me.”
• “The equipment I am using can easily handle all this food and it’s going to be a breeze.”
• “This cooker will help build our reputation and inspire awe in the crowd.”

These are key points in cooking for crowds.

I personally don’t cook for crowds much, but it is a ball of fun and can make you a ball of money too—if, you have your act together.

As I already said, one key point in cooking for large crowds, is knowing how much food to cook and what it will cost you.

If that is a challenge for you, you need to check out this free BBQ catering planner spreadsheet:

BBQ Catering Planner for Large Crowds

This calculator will help you if you know how many people you want to feed, but—

• You want a starting-point guideline for how much food to figure per person.
• You want to quickly calculate the food cost for an event, including your specific meats and sides.
• You want to quote large events with confidence and ease.

This calculator was put together by BBQ and catering experts, so they know your language. 🙂

Now for the equipment…

Another key point as a barbecue caterer is to choose a smoker or grill that can handle your size crowd, make the job easy, and impress the crowd (when cooking on-site).

Meadow Creek offers smokers, chicken cookers, and pig roasters in a nice range of sizes.

I put together some charts to help you choose the model that 1) can handle the amount of meat you want to cook and 2) will fit your crowd size.

Click here for my capacity charts.

Click here for my crowd sizes chart.

As for making the job easy and impressing the crowd, I’ll have to save that for another day.

Any Questions?

If you are having trouble making sense of my charts or need help choosing the right model cooker, let us know. You can call Marlin toll-free at 877-248-7753. Or send an email to sales@smokymtbarbecue.com.

We’re here to help you enjoy easy and profitable barbecues for many years to come.

Have fun,

Lavern