Making Crowd Size Recipes

by Carol
(Naples)

The secret to cooking for a crowd or really any type of entertaining is to start early. Personally, I do not like to do any meal preparations on the day I am having company. There are a million last minute items to tend to that there really isn't time to prepare the food too, on the day of, without making myself crazy.

Some recipes are difficult to double or triple but I do it anyway, unless they have large chunks of food or nuts. For example, making two or three pecan pies.....I will do that in two or three separate bowls because the pecans never get distributed evenly if I mix it all in one bowl and then try to pour into separate pie plates. Now, my chocolate cake recipe is different. I double and triple that all in one bowl and because it's just chocolate batter, I can evenly distribute into separate cake dishes.

As for cooking for a very large crowd, I have done that too. I've cooked for parties of 100, 20, 30 and whatever. If it's meat, the rule of thumb is 1/4 to 1/2# per person. Chicken - 1/2 breast per person. Chunks of beef (beef stroganoff or beef burgundy) the 1/4 to 1/2# rule would be good.

I have a tomato and tortellini recipe that is wonderful. The single recipe calls for 1 can of soup. For a crowd, I used 4 cans of soup but just DOUBLED everything else and it worked. In my book, I just say it serves a crowd. I don't specify how many. I really don't have a formula. I usually just "wing it" and it seems to work.

Better, of course, to have more than not enough!