COOKING
FOR
CROWDS

From the Kitchen of Nancy Wilkins

Cooking Tips

		Cooking up a meal for large crowds is not something for the fainthearted or the lazy. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of work. If you know what you are getting into and have a clear picture of what needs to be done you can break the job down into smaller parts. The whole job can be divided into five parts:
PLANNING / SHOPPING / PRE-PREPARATION / PREPARATION and CLEANUP. Shopping is discussed on its own page.
	Planning
	Before the first food dish is decided upon, before the date is set, this part of the job starts. You need to sit down with your client (sometimes that client is you!) and make decisions. How much is going to be spent? When is the event? How many people are going to be served? Is it going to be a buffet or a sit down dinner with waitresses? Knowing the answers to these questions and others like them will help you to determine what dishes to serve. There are more constraints on the kind of food to prepare for a buffet than there is on food served individually at the table. Low budget dinners take a little more time and creativity than dinners with larger budgets. Large numbers of people for a sit down formal dinner take a well trained wait-staff. After these decisions are made, then you must decide the menu. Keeping in mind the characteristics of your diners, you must try to do the impossible and come up with a menu that will please as many of the diners as possible. You don't serve escargot to a group of red-neck cowboys celebrating the wedding of one of their buddies. Nor, do you serve Barbecue at a debutante ball. Remember also, that your idea of good tasting food is not universal.
I used to serve enchiladas when my students and I were selling taking home dinners to the teachers. My hispanic students were really upset at how we cooked enchiladas. "This is not how you do it, Mrs. Wilkins. Do you want my mother to come teach us how to do it, Mrs. Wilkins?" I had to explain to them that we were not serving their families but people who did not know how true Mexican food tasted. We had to cook to their tastes and expectations, not our own. Give the customer what he or she is expecting, do no try to surprise them without warning.

	After the menu has been decided, it is time to get down and do some serious planning. Think of it as a war campaign. Make a list of those jobs that need to be conquered and determine the order of attack. Make a shopping list, don't forget the little things like salt and pepper for the serving tables. Check your serving utensils, do they need additions? Who is going to help you? Can you depend upon them for important jobs? Write it all down, each job that needs to be done and put them in order. I found that using sticky notes, with one job per note was a good way to organize. That way, I could reorganize my tasks as problems erupted by moving notes around. And they will, your schedule will not remain in its original form, so be flexible.
	Pre-Preparation
	Whatever you can do in advance, means that much more time to take care of the little emergencies that always crop up at the last minute. Spaghetti noodles can be cooked ahead of time and warmed up by running very hot water over them. Baked potatoes can be scrubbed and wrapped in foil days ahead. Pie dough can be made and frozen just waiting for use. Of course, always get your chopping and dicing completed ahead of time. The table can be set the night before with glasses turned upside down perhaps.
Did you know that a lot of commercial cooks wash baking potatoes in the dishwasher?
	Pre-Preparation is the secret of a lot of cooks. You do not want the food to resemble leftovers, of course. There is still a lot to do on the day of the event. But whatever you can do ahead, do it. Think ahead and plan your cooking chores. That way you can determine the order of cooking tasks.
	Cooking the Food Otherwise Known as Preparation
	So now it is the big day. You know exactly what your are going to do. Oh no! You left the frozen pie crust at home in the freezer! Send a "go-fer' home to get them. You do not leave. Nothing gets cooked if you are not there. So while you wait for the pie crust, you work on something else. Or else, think of an alternative to the pie crust. Everything should be planned out ahead of time. Remember that it takes a long time for gallons of water to boil. Plan your time accordingly. By the time of the big day, you should know exactly how long it takes to cook each item. Now i s not the time to experiment with new foods or recipes. Don't forget safety. Your safety and the safety of the food. Keep food safe, do not leave out more than two hours. Keep your self safe, check out the safety rules posted at other sites. Do not taste food from the spoon your are using to stir. I don't care how many cooks you see doing it on TV. Just don't do it. Don't try to catch a falling knife, just jump back and let it fall. By the way, that knife should be sharp, not dull.
The worst problems I had cooking with teenagers was when the food in a pot was boiling over onto the burner and sending up huge flames. My heart jumped to my throat, but before I could get there, Debbie Hodges, a student, calmly walked over and pulled the pan off the burner. She wondered what all the fuss was about. "It was just food spilling over, Mrs. Wilkins!"
	CleanUp
	I know some of you out there had mothers like mine. She kept harping on the idea of cleaning as you go. "If you will just keep a sink of dishwater going it will be there to wash dishes as you go." Well, if the timing is going well, and no minor disasters have cropped up, that works just fine. Mother did know what she was talking about after all. But, Mother had a lot more control over what was going on in her kitchen also. When you are cooking for a large crowd sometimes you just do not have the time, energy, or concentration to "wash as you go". But, part of the job is leaving a clean kitchen behind you. If you are a one-person show, guess who gets to do it.? A lot of caterers avoid some of the cleanup by using disposables. That redneck party we spoke about earlier probably would expect it. China is "sissy-stuff" you know. But, again you must take the characteristics of your crowd into account. If you rented china and linens you need to get them returned as soon as possible. If they are yours, sooner or later they will need to be cleaned. Once again, planning is the key. Determine what will need to be done and plan the time and energy for it. Avoid the letdown euphoria until after the cleanup is down and everything is in its place. If you know you have it coming then it won't be such a rude shock when it comes time for the cleanup.

made by
Nancy Wilkins
University of Houston Clear Lake
Spring, 1998