I've noticed this sort of thing being asked about doubling portions etc but I now want to go a bit further !

My daughter has been taken on as part time chef at a residential home ( big_smile ) Accidently rather than by choice (was working as a care assistant and chef's been taken ill etc).

Now she can cook quite well and has no problem knocking up a meal at home and from all accounts is managing quite well at work !

It dawned on me that every time she texts me asking for recipes or help that my knowledge is of the "home cook" (based on about 5-10 people) which is different from catering for 50 people at once !

Things like browning onions for instance, for 5 people you might be using 1 onion in a recipe which will nicely brown in a large pan. If you simply multiplied the figure to match your "guests" then you would have 10 onions all in a pan which would sweat and boil more than brown ! This means you must have to adjust recipes and the way you go about them as browning 1 onion at a time 10 times isn't going to be very cost/time effective.

So is there a "catering manual" ? or a recipe site aimed at catering rather than cooking ? - Consider this is probably only going to be a short term measure for her while the chef gets better so I wouldn't want to spend ??'s on a book etc

Does anyone have any tips on doing large amounts at once? Have you ever catered for a large family get together which meant changing the way you had to do things ?

thanks

Steve

Hello steve

I noticed that the book recomended to you on Jamie's site is out of stock!

I found this site on the web, which gives a formula (copyright!!) for converting recipe ingredients to desired yield; http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k4QsU130gjsC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=how+to+adjust+a+recipe+to+catering&source=web&ots=pp1sjCyrzh&sig=sOsMrAbBku7myqfgf5bOxCV8ygQ&hl=en#PPA170,M1 Give it a try.

I found this formula on another site, but unfortunately I closed the site. I can?t find it again to give you it?s reference! If you can find it, please feel free to mention it here:

1. Divide the number of people you need the recipe for by the number of people your own recipe is for.

2. Then multiply the resulting figure by the amount of each ingredient one by one.

Sounds a bit complicated, but shouldn?t be too hard if you have a calculator!

Personally, I do it by guess work, like most of us home cooks ;-)!

Mamta

I have cooked for 16, and there were no real problems (though I carefully planned the schedule as far as doing a spread sheet time line).

I have also cooked for 60 people (the cuisine was from the very unusual Comoros Islands, between Madagasca and Africa mainland.) It equated quite closely to a kind of chicken curry and vegetable rice, and I made the custard for afters, there was another chef as well). The rice was not a problem, once up to temperature (I use only the total absorption method) and was complimented on its result, but the chicken was a bit of a problem.

Finding big enough pans (for 40 chicken legs, other 20 were vegetarians) and enough heat, even on a large 5 ring burner range, was not easy. This is one of those jobs where experience counts the most.

In theory, if one egg takes six minutes to cook (I like 6 minute eggs) then two six minute eggs will take .....six minutes to cook (not 12 minutes). However, this works up to the point when the coldness of the eggs becomes important and the pan gets too large to maintain the temperature. So, scaling up ingredients is not too much of a problem (IMHO) but the cooking of the ingredients can be.

Thanks for the replies !

Its not so much the quantity its the affect on cooking it that I'm more curious about !

If it says use 1 litre of stock and 1kg of veg to make soup for 4 people Obviously I can divide 1 litre by 4 to get 250ml and do the same for 1kg of veg to get 250g of veg then if its for 20 people simply multiply 20x250ml and 20x250kg to get the amounts.

However I think you must have to change the way you do some of the cooking when its for a lot more people ?

Example I'm just making up to show the problems -

1- put the chicken in the pressure cooker and steam for 20 minutes serves 4

Well If I wanted to serve 8 I couldn't fit 2 chickens in so I'd have to do it twice or use 2 pressure cookers. If I happened to have a massive pressure cooker and could fit two chickens in would I then have to alter the timing ?

2- Drop the batter coated veg into red hot fat for 2 minutes, take out, drain and let stand on kitchen paper for a couple of seconds before serving fresh. This is ok for a few people but you couldn't do it for 50 as they would either be eating in batches for hours or you would have to leave some of the battered veg going cold and soggy while you did the rest. So you would either have to alter the way you cooked it or not make it at all ?

3 - Whisk the oil into the vinegar to create an emulsion ! Ok making mayo for a few but making a couple of litres would it work in massive quantities at once?

Its this sort of thing that I'm wondering about ? A big book of hints and tips for mass catering ?

thanks Steve

Most of your concerns would be dealt with in an 'industrial kitchen' by using 'industrial sized' pans and appliances (steam ovens, huge fat friers etc). If you wanted to duplicate this kind of thing at home, you couldn't. Even in a large restaurant, meals are decided upon partly by what is feasible. Just choosing a recipe and deciding to scale up (the logical approach) could be impossible for practical reasons.

As for timings, as I said, a six minute egg takes six minutes to cook, two six minute eggs still take six minutes to cook (at temperature) but you also need to scale up the amount of water and pan size (and heat loss) to cook the egg in six minutes, but it won't be very different.

There is a site somewhere that lets you put in the number of people you are catering for, and adjusts the ingredient amounts on-line for you. Unfortunately, it also adjusts the timings pro rata, which just is not appropriate. I e-mailed them, but they took no notice.

As you say, it might be that technique intensive and timing sensitve recipes are not approprite for scale up or batch production. This is apparent in restaurants and retail outlets, and lets say it, even so called Indian restaurants produce food very quickly, but at the cost of quality. The best Indian restaurants I've been to make a batch of a dish, and when its gone, its gone (for that lunchtime/evening, unless they make another batch!)

I have cooked for 60-70 people quite regularly in my young days, but in a very unscientific way. Maximum I cook for these days is 8-10, quite regularly.

Say I was making chicken curry. What I did was this:

1. Worked out the quantities of main ingredients, I would normally cook about 1 kg. of meat/chicken for 7-8 people. But this would be with 2-3 other side dishes. If there were many more dishes, I would reduce the amount a bit more. I found that this was usually enough. There was always some left over, in line with the Indian tradition of not running out of food!

2. To cook, I would work out the amount for the main ingredient s (chicken, onions, tomatoes etc.) by simple multiplication and then write it down next to each item.

3. All other ingredients would be calculated same way and written down on the recipe the same way.

4. Each item would be measured out, e.g. spices, salt in separate bowls and kept aside.

5. When it was time to add spices, I would go by what felt right, keeping salt and chillies lower to start with, adjusting later, if necessary.

It is not a direct multiplication, but near enough. It has always worked for me, with very, very occasional bland dish. In this case, I would make some extra ?spice mix?/sauce and add to the curry. I can?t remember when was the last time I needed to do this.

I know that the professional cooks in India that come out to your house and cook for big parties, wedding receptions etc., have their ingredients measured up according to the number of people and written down, but I don?t know how to get hold of these.

As Lapis says, they have their set dishes that they cook for parties, because every dish is not suitable for a large number of people.

Hope this helps.

thanks again for all of your replies, thats been very informative and pointed me in the right directions !

Thanks, Steve

Rather late in the day (only four months late) but thought I'd pass this on.

Recently had Jeanette Orrey's book 'The Dinner Lady' out of the library.

Her recipes quantities are listed for 4 adults or 96 primary school children so the values are rounded up/done generally by a factor of 12 not 24. Interestingly she doesn't seem to make any differential in methods used between the two. I suspect she has 'rounded down' the recipes from catering ones so the methods are more suited to cooking for 96!

thanks for that... did the recipes seem to be more a lot in the oven and leave type things rather than bits of this and bits of that, cook a bit of this.. etc ?

Steve