cooking for a party of 25


 
K

Kimble

New member
Hello,


I am having 25 colleagues over on in a couple of weeks on a week night. I have never cooked for this many people and was contemplating just doing burgers. This seems rather boring to me and i'm contemplating doing ribs or a few pork butts as well.

Seeing that I'll be working during that week and unable to manage a long cook, I'm leaning towards doing up several racks of ribs.

Question - how many racks do you think i should cook?

I plan on doing them the night before, foiling, refrigerating and then re-heating on the grill during the party - will this be ok?

Thanks
Dave
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Kimble:
Hello,


I am having 25 colleagues over on in a couple of weeks on a week night. I have never cooked for this many people and was contemplating just doing burgers. This seems rather boring to me and i'm contemplating doing ribs or a few pork butts as well.

Seeing that I'll be working during that week and unable to manage a long cook, I'm leaning towards doing up several racks of ribs.

Question - how many racks do you think i should cook?

I plan on doing them the night before, foiling, refrigerating and then re-heating on the grill during the party - will this be ok?

Thanks
Dave </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

i always overdo things a bit and usually it turns out well. for normal eaters i figure about 1pound uncooked for big eaters 1.5 pounds uncooked. bump it up a bit for ribs. i know i can eat at least a half rack or so by myself of babybacks.

the beutiful thing about bbq is you can do it anytime you have time freeze it and reheat when you need if its only a day or two just refridgerate.

bbq can be reheated in the oven on a grill or in bags set in boiling water on the stove top.

when i reheat on the grill i put it in aluminum foil add a bit of water and steam it back to hot. same for the oven.
 
Is it a Friday or a Saturday night? If it's a Saturday, would consider an overnight cook for pulled pork? I would suggest that, because ribs for 25 people is gonna be expensive. You can feed pulled for for that group for $40 or so. Ribs will easily be over $100.

I would aim for 30lbs of raw weight boneless pork butt. Cooked weight will be about 20lbs, you lose about 30% of the raw weight. You'll probably have leftovers, but that's a good problem to have.
 
it's on a wednesday night which adds to the timing issue. I guess i could cook the butts on Sunday and freeze them until Wednesday and reheat in the oven when needed.

I have never frozen pork butt and would assume i would need to foil and cover in plastic wrap.

Thoughts?

Thanks
Dave
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Kimble:
it's on a wednesday night which adds to the timing issue. I guess i could cook the butts on Sunday and freeze them until Wednesday and reheat in the oven when needed.

I have never frozen pork butt and would assume i would need to foil and cover in plastic wrap.

Thoughts?

Thanks
Dave </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Do you or anyone you know have a vac sealer? If so, cook the pork on Sunday, vac seal, and place the bags in the frige. Then take the bags out of the fridge about an hr before reheating. Heat up a pot of water to around 180º. Remove from the burner (if using an electric stove top), drop the vac bags of pork in, cover, and let sit for 20 min. Cut open the bags, and you have fresh hot PP. Works like a charm on PP, Ribs, Brisket, Chuck roll, chicken, etc.
icon_wink.gif
 
Bryan -

I got a vac sealer a few weeks ago for my birthday and was wondering what was best way to seal and serve later.

This very timely might be cooking this weekend just for futur meals etc. Seems very easy.

I got a few more questions but dont want to hijack this thread.
 
Hot off the wsm isn't all its cracked up to be. Properly handled bbq can be just as good several days later. Here's a quick list of why I prefer to cook ahead and reheat:

1) timing is not and issue, you aren't pressed to get the meat done and you can give it as long as it needs. You can afford time to let it rest and if it PP you can take your time pulling.

2) you attention can be fully applied to the meat

3) you can be clean and rested

4) if foiling, juices can be recovered, chilled, defatted, and reincorporated into the PP or PB.

This is what I recently did:

Cooked two 3 kg beef roasts off a chuck roll for 11.5 hours with 3 hours of rest in a cooler. While those were going I cooked 2 racks of back ribs.

For the ribs, I left them un-sauced and cut the racks in half so the four half-racks would fit into an aluminum roaster. I sealed them tight and floated it on sink full of ice. These went in a fridge for about 48 hours.

The beef juice was poured out and the beef was pulled and put back into aluminum roaster. Same deal, chilled on ice and put in the fridge. The next morning I scraped the fat off the juice and spread the jello over the two pans of beef.

The bbq was brought to a location where I had access to a gas grill. I reheated the pans as best I could on the grill, and about half way through the reheating, I removed the ribs, and sauced them and put them back as is on indirect.

I'd say everything came out just about as good as hot off the wsm, and on the day of the party, I had little to do, yet still looked like a hero manning the ribs on the gasser.

good luck.
 
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