Cook Talk

graduation party
Bethany
06/13/13 		i am helping my friend with her son's graduation open house on Saturday. i was doing good on amounts but she just threw me for a loop. originally she said 75 but now she is telling me the invite has went to 250 people. She is serving burgers, brats and hot dogs. I know from the site, we need 1 of each of the burger and dogs plus 10-30% more of each. How do you figure it when you throw in the brats? Also, with the invite going out to 250 but only 75 confirmed, how do you plan for that? the party is going to be a mixed crowd of adults, young adults and kids with food served from 3pm-8pm. She is not too worried abut having leftovers as some of the young adults will be staying later and some all weekend so she knows they will get eaten but she is also trying to watch the budget so I don't want to horribly overbuy.
ellen
06/13/13 		Caterers figure that 85% of the invited will come, unless there is a competing activity or other odd thing. That is 200 people. Grilling for that many is very demanding! Consider adding some pre-cooked choices!

How about meatballs? Can be bought frozen, thawed in microwave and heated in sauce- allows for leaving frozen if people don't come.

Then cold cuts- with careful buying, bologna, salami and ham cost about the same as hot dogs. Open packages as needed- less waste.

Then if you want to do burgers, you have much less to do.

Would this work for your 200 guests? Write back.

burgers, brats and hot dogs

Bethany
06/13/13 		Thanks for the feedback. I will ask my friend her opinion - since it is ultimately her party. I think she said that someone was bringing ham.
Bethany
06/13/13 		So if we do it that way, how much do we buy of each thing: burgers, brats, dogs, lunchmeat?
ellen
06/13/13 		if you did it that way, I would say, skip the dogs.

Burgers- 200
Brats- 20-25 pounds
Do big sandwiches for 100 (teen hoagie) from the sandwich page

Do 2 times the fixings amounts, fitting the rolls to the brats, burgers, you can use bread for all or some of the rolls.

Bethany
06/16/13 		Thank you for your help! The party was a success.... my friend was insistant about the menu but she did concede and let me buy frozen patties - she originally wanted to do fresh meat and patty it all up. We ended up with 80 patties, 80 hot dogs, 50 smoked sausages, and 50 brats. Everything was frozen and packaged in packages of either 20 or 25 so we could use as we needed. We also did your suggestion of meatballs - we bought 10 pounds and did two kinds of sauce - as it turned out a local store sells cans of predone sauce for meatballs in 4 varieties - it is enough to cover their 5# bags of meatballs and is actually pretty good. We had plenty of food with some left over, which my friend was fine with. We had no problem keeping up with the crowd as we had one big group at 3pm and then another group at about 6pm and then everyone wanted seconds about 8 or 9..
ellen
06/16/13 		Thanks for the feedback. Any idea how many you actually served?
Bethany
06/17/13 		She thinks about 100... there were basically three groups of people - local guests that came for a bit, ate a little bit or maybe just some cake and then left - your typical open house crowd. There were family that came and stayed for several hours so they ate a normal meal and some had seconds and cake. Then we had the young adults who funneled in for hours and ate when they got there, ate seconds and I don't doubt that they fired up the grill after I left and ate a third time..several of them came prepared to stay all night.
ellen
06/17/13 		Thanks.
Bethany
06/17/13 		I did forget to add that we did have someone who brought an alumnium roaster full of precooked and sliced ham and we did baked beans and green bean casserole and others brought potato salad, german potato salad, slaw, broccoli salad, a dip and chips, and potato chips so we had plenty to round out the meal.
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