Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Party Food Cooking
When you are planning a party, cooking should be part of the fun rather than a chore. However, a lot of people manage to get themselves into a panic and worry that they have bought too little food or way too much. They worry that their guests will not enjoy their food or their recipes will not turn out well.
Knowing How Much Food for a Party
There is no exact science if you want to estimate how much food for a party. It is more of an art. If you are quite new to cooking food for parties, here are some tips that will help you guess the required amounts more accurately and help you relax instead of worrying!
First of all, who is coming to your party? Is it mainly adults or will you need to make some child-friendly dishes too? How long will your party go on for? You would need more food for an afternoon barbecue, for example, that you would for an after dinner cocktail party.
Make more of the dishes that you think will be popular. Nearly everybody likes boneless chicken recipes, for example, so make plenty of those because there will be other dishes, such as seafood recipes, which not everybody likes or is able to eat.
If you make many different recipes, your guests will have less of each. If you have only five dishes, your guests will eat quite a lot of each. If you have a buffet of thirty dishes, your guests will probably only take a small spoonful of each dish.
You can estimate how much food for a party quite well if you know how many people are coming and how much they are likely to eat. Round up your guesses rather than rounding them down because it is better to have a bit of food left over than running out before everybody has finished eating!
Make sure you have some bulk food items too, such as bread if you are having a sit-down dinner or nuts and olives for a cocktail party. People will nibble on these foods before starting on the main dishes or if they are still hungry between courses.
Portion Sizes for Party Food
With appetizers, you should allow six bites per person. With the main meal, you should allow about six to eight ounces of meat or fish, an ounce and a half of grains, five ounces of potatoes, four ounces of vegetables and an ounce of undressed salad per person. For dessert, you should allow one slice of cake, four ounces of creamy dessert or five ounces of ice cream per guest. These measures are approximate because different people have different appetites of course.
Other Party Food Cooking Tips
* Avoid repeating the main ingredient if you are having a dinner party. Do not serve a boneless chicken appetizer followed by a boneless chicken main course, for example.
* Have both warm and cold foods on offer if you are serving a buffet meal.
* Offer different food textures with the buffet or meal, so you have a range of soft, hard, crispy, and crunchy food items.
* Make sure you have a good variety of colors, so the food on your buffet table or dining table looks attractive.
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