I have recently found myself cooking BBQ for fifty people. The story of how this came about isn't something I can share here, but fortunately I can share that it went extremely well - the food all came out well cooked (well, mostly - there were a couple of very crispy burgers in there), everyone had enough, and there weren't any points where there was a big queue of people waiting to be fed. Which was all good.
The big lesson to learn from this is: never again! It was too much to take on, at least with the facilities that I had available. For cooking for fifty I think there would be a need for some other cooking facilities, such that I can produce some pulled pork, or similar options to cook for a lot of people at once - a water smoker or similar would be needed.
The second lesson is that the job was actually a lot worse in the build-up than in the reality. I had spent quite a lot of time worried that it just wouldn't work out, and in the end it turned out just to be a big effort, but not fundamentally difficult.
The final lesson, and one that is of use even for our 'regular' BBQs is that the approach of having a dedicated serving area was definitely a good idea - we had a big table set aside for all the non-meat foods, and then another table with the meats (and meat substitutes) to be served from. And these were carefully segregated to account for dietary needs.
And that's really all there is to say about that. It was a really good day, quite aside from my part in it.
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