Cooking for a Crowd? Need Large Quantity Recipes? Why Not Create Your Own?

It is often hard to find just the right large quantity recipe for the theme of your party or for the "culinary experience" you are aspiring to offer your guests. Here are a few tips and suggestions on how to modify your favorite 4-6 serving recipes when you find yourself cooking for a crowd of 20 or more.

What constitutes a crowd? Of course it's all relative (your relatives, not mine). Seriously, if you are accustomed to cooking for one to three, cooking for 20-50 people may seem overwhelming. When cooking for a crowd, there are three important considerations; adequate cookware, sufficient refrigerator space and recipe selection.

Obviously you should seek out recipes geared towards feeding a crowd. It is often easy to find large quantity recipes for basic dishes such as lasagna and mashed potatoes. But what do you do if you have your heart set on using your favorite 4-serving recipe for Corn and Black Bean Polenta for a party of 25?

Even for expert cooks, modifying a recipe for large quantity cooking is not just a matter of endless multiplications. If you expand a recipe too much--you are bound to run into trouble and end up with an off tasting or a poorly flavored dish.

For a basic dish like mashed potatoes, it would be acceptable to multiply all of the ingredients in a 4-serving recipe by two, thus doubling the recipe to serve 8. However, recipes are not indefinitely expandable (or shrinkable for that matter) and enlarging a recipe any more then 2-4 times is not
recommended.

You may also use recipe converters which are easily found online. The converters however, simply "do the math", multiplying each ingredient amount by the increased number of servings you enter into the converter. It does not take into account, for example, the pungency or texture of the ingredients. If a 4-serving recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of finely chopped rosemary and you want to triple the recipe to serve 12; 3 tablespoons of rosemary will probably overwhelm all the other flavors and seasonings in the dish.

It is a good idea to be cautious when multiplying ingredients like salt, flour, cornstarch, eggs, seafood, meats, robust herbs, oils, onions, garlic, celery and peppers. Some ingredients will impart enough flavor, texture or body when only increased a fraction. In addition some of these ingredients can be added a little at a time as you continually check for taste.

What if you want to serve 25 people with a not-so-simple, 4-serving recipe with numerous ingredients? Doubling or tripling more complex recipes could get complicated. One trick is to batch cook. Batch cooking requires planning ahead and cooking in advance. It may also mean freezing prepared dishes. It is also a matter of "doing the math".

To serve 25 with a 4-serving recipe, you can cook 5-6 individual batches of that recipe or, you can expand the recipe (no more then 2-4 times) and cook in batches accordingly. For example, to serve 25 from a 4-serving recipe, double the recipe to 8 and cook three batches or, triple it and cook two batches. To serve 18 with a 6-serving recipe, cook it three times or cook one 6-serving batch and one batch that has been doubled to serve 12. You get the idea.

It is almost impossible to double or triple recipe ingredients for cakes, cookies, pie dough, or breads, without meeting with utter disaster. It's a chemistry thing. Instead, prepare a single batch repeatedly until you have enough food to feed your guests. Again, cooking in advance is the key.

Chances are you can successfully double or triple the ingredients of recipes for individual appetizers, such as stuffed mushrooms or crostini; and for snack mixes, dips, salsas, punches, one serving-size pieces of meat, poultry or fish, tossed salads, pasta salads and vegetables dishes.

If you are cooking for a crowd of 25 or more you will most likely serve buffet style. It is the best way to serve larger crowds. On a buffet of numerous dishes, people will take smaller portions of each in order to sample everything. Also, not everyone will sample every dish. This means that every dish
you prepare need not serve 25. You need only prepare a few large quantity dishes. Look for recipes that serve 8-12 and double them (or not).

With a calculator and a little ingredient know-how you can comfortably convert most of your party food recipes and present a tantalizing menu to your
guests.

Have fun!

Debra Haydel

3 Ways to Create Easy Chicken Recipe Ideas

When cooking chicken you have a a lot of options on how you cook it. You also have a lot of options on what you can cook it with. Chicken goes quite well with many different foods, and depending on the spices you use you can create a million different easy chicken recipes.

Easy Chicken Pasta Recipe Ideas

Chicken and pasta just go together. You can easily create chicken and pasta dishes whether it has an Italian, American or even Thai flavor. The only thing that makes the difference is the spices you use and the type of pasta you use.

For Italian dishes you may use a tomato based sauce and linguine. For an American feel you might use spiral noodles and create a mayo based chicken salad. To create a Thai type dish you can use thin rice noodles and Asian spices.

Easy Chicken Soup Recipe Ideas

You may immediately think of chicken noodle soup when you think of chicken soup, but there are tons of ways you can create soups with chicken.

There are great chili recipes, a wide range of chicken soups as well as chicken stews. If you have a crockpot making soup of any kind is an easy way to a delicious and healthy dinner.

Easy Baked Chicken Recipe Ideas

Baked chicken may sound dry and gross to you, but when cooked well it is delicious, moist and flavorful. You can bake a whole chicken which is called roasting. Depending on the spices you use you can create a wide range of flavors for your chicken.

You can bake them in a sauce to keep them moist. You can keep this low calorie by using low calorie sauce ingredients.

You can also "bake" a chicken in your crockpot. This is great for busy people who want a home cooked meal but don't have a couple hours in the evening to wait on a roasted chicken.

As you can see chicken is a truly versatile food. It is high in protein and low in fat. You can cook it in so many ways and with so many flavors that you could actually cook chicken every night of the year and never have the same chicken twice!

The Key Principle to Create a Solid Recipe For Red Lobster Biscuits

Are you interested in creating your own recipe for Red Lobster biscuits? Then welcome to the club. Not that there's a real club, but thousands of us like to think of ourselves as culinary Sherlock Holmes trying to investigate the true form of Red Lobster restaurant recipes. In actual fact, most of us are only stumbling along like Lestrade - we frequently think we've got it, but at the last moment the truth slips away from our fingers. That's alright, though. The more Red Lobster biscuit recipes we try out, the more we learn. And getting there is half the fun, don't you agree?

Never forget that the recipe for these biscuits was not created overnight. There was much trial and error involved - two steps forward, one step back. Getting the recipe right just so was like exploring a maze with many dead ends and retracing of steps. The unique delicate taste, the airy texture, the way the biscuits seem to melt in your mouth. Red Lobster got it right in a way that became a hit with their customers. So when you try to duplicate these biscuits, remember that you'll need to go through lots of trial and error yourself.

Don't worry, I guarantee that your first time will be a disaster. But as long as you persist in your efforts, as long as you get more and more practice, you will get better and better results. With more experience under your belt, you'll get closer and closer to the perfect biscuit. Remember that Edison failed a thousand times before he invented the light bulb.

Not that you NEED to fail a thousand times. Just look around for cookbooks or recipe websites which have Red Lobster biscuit recipes. If you follow the steps in the recipe, you'll get your perfect biscuit faster. This doesn't mean you won't fail - it just means you'll succeed faster. After all, no recipe can cover every detail. Remember that practice makes perfect! If at first your biscuits look or taste weird, just try to figure out what went wrong and do it again.

Don't worry about it. Just have fun and you'll eventually be able to make your own perfect Red Lobster restaurant biscuits. Remember that nothing worthwhile comes without practice. The same goes for these heavenly biscuits.