Cooking for a crowd on a budget

Feeding 10 or 12 people does not need a big budget, just the right dishes, careful scaling and a little maths. This lesson walks you through it with a worked example.

Choose dishes that scale well

• Rice dishes, stews, curries, tray bakes, soups and big salads scale up easily. Fiddly items such as individually fried pieces or plated dishes do not.
• Build the meal around low-cost bulk ingredients such as rice, lentils, chickpeas, potatoes, onions, tomatoes and seasonal vegetables, and use meat or chicken as one part of the dish rather than the whole plate.
• A one-pot or oven dish frees your hob and your hands. Nisha Katona's biryani, for example, finishes with 15 minutes in the oven while you do other things.
• Have one vegetarian main or a hearty vegetable dish, so everyone has a full plate whatever their diet.

How to scale a recipe

• Find your conversion factor: divide the number of servings you need by the number the recipe makes. The Escoffier School gives this as the basic rule.
• Example: a recipe for 4, cooked for 12, has a conversion factor of 12 divided by 4, which is 3. Multiply each main ingredient by 3.
• Weigh ingredients in grams where you can. Escoffier recommends a kitchen scale for accuracy when scaling.
• Go carefully with salt, spices and strong flavourings. Escoffier advises increasing them by a smaller factor than the rest and then adjusting to taste.
• Keep the depth of food in the pan or tray about the same as in the original recipe so it cooks evenly. Use two pans or two trays instead of one overfilled one.
• Bigger batches can take a different time to cook, so Escoffier suggests starting to check for doneness earlier than you expect and checking often.

Worked example: biryani for 12

• Nisha Katona's one-pot chicken biryani serves 4 using 400g basmati rice, 600g chicken breast and 3 tablespoons of garam masala.
• For 12, multiply by 3: 1.2kg rice and 1.8kg chicken. Check against Love Food Hate Waste's 75g of dried rice per person: 12 times 75g is 900g, so 900g to 1.2kg of rice is a sensible range.
• Spices: tripling would give 9 tablespoons of garam masala. Following Escoffier's advice, start with less (for example 6 tablespoons), taste the curry layer, and add more if needed.
• Equipment: you will probably need two large ovenproof dishes rather than one, so the layers stay a similar depth to the original.
• Cooking the rice in two batches is easier than one enormous pot that cooks unevenly.

Costing it: a simple budget sheet

• List every ingredient, the amount you need, and the price of the pack you will buy. Remember you only use part of some packs (spices, oil), so count those as small costs.
• Illustrative example with made-up round numbers: chicken 60, rice 15, onions and tomatoes 10, yoghurt and spices 10, salad 20, dessert 15, drinks 20. Total 150 for 12 people, which is 12.50 each.
• Compare that total with what you can afford before you shop, and cut the most expensive item first (for example, use half chicken and half chickpeas).
• Buy rice, onions and spices in larger packs if you host often; they keep well. Buy salad and herbs as close to the day as possible.
• Decide in advance whether you are paying or splitting costs, and say so in the invitation (see lesson ho-08).

Serving a crowd

• The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggests preparing several small platters and swapping in fresh ones during the party, rather than putting everything out at once.
• Keep backup hot dishes in an oven set low (the FDA gives 200 to 250F, about 93 to 121C) and backup cold dishes in the fridge until needed.
• Never top up a half-empty serving dish with fresh food. The FDA advises replacing it with a freshly filled dish.
• Put serving spoons in every dish and stack plates at the start of the table so the line moves.