How Much Food for a Party – Some Useful Tips
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!
Have you only invited adults to the party or is there a need for some child-friendly recipes as well? How long will your party last for and at what time of day is it going to be? You would need a lot more food for an afternoon barbecue than for an after dinner cocktail party, for example.
Work out which dishes will be more popular and make more of those. Boneless chicken appetizers, for example, tend to be more popular than shellfish or pork appetizers, simply because nearly everybody likes boneless chicken recipes, so make more of those.
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 guess how much food for a party by multiplying the number of expected guests by the amount they will probably eat. Always round your estimates up rather than down because it is better to have some food left over after the party than run out of it before everyone has finished eating!
Have some bulk items, such as nuts or olives for a cocktail party or bread for a sit-down dinner party, which can fill people up if the other food selections are running low and which people will nibble on before starting on the main dishes.
Party Food Portion Sizes
Six bites per guest is a good allowance for an appetizer. Seven ounces of meat or fish, an ounce and a half of grains, an ounce of undressed salad, five ounces of potatoes and four ounces of vegetables per person is about right for the main meal. For dessert, allow everyone five ounces of ice cream, four ounces of creamy dessert like mousse or a slice of cake or pie. These measures are just to give you an idea because some people have a big appetite and others have a small one.
Good to Know Party Food Tips
* Never repeat the main ingredient at a dinner party. You should not serve a shrimp appetizer followed by a shrimp main course for example.
* If you are having buffet food, offer a choice of both warm and cold foods.
* Mix different textures, such as soft vegetable purees and crispy fresh bread.
* Using different colored foods is a great way to make your dinner table or buffet table look exciting.
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Tags: Chicken, cooking, Cooking Tips, diet, eating, entertaining, family, Food, food and drink, health, home, home and garden, lifestyles, recipe, recipes
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