Easy Party Food Cooking Tips

When you are planning a party, cooking should be part of the fun rather than a chore. However, a lot of people manage to get themselves into a panic and worry that they have bought too little food or way too much. They worry that their guests will not enjoy their food or their recipes will not turn out well.

Knowing How Much Food for a Party

There is no exact science if you want to estimate how much food for a party. It is more of an art. If you are quite new to cooking food for parties, here are some tips that will help you guess the required amounts more accurately and help you relax instead of worrying!

Have you only invited adults to the party or is there a need for some child-friendly recipes as well? How long will your party last for and at what time of day is it going to be? You would need a lot more food for an afternoon barbecue than for an after dinner cocktail party, for example.

Make more of the potentially popular dishes. Almost everyone loves boneless chicken recipes, so make a lot of those because there will be other dishes, such as international recipes or seafood recipes, which will not appeal to everyone.

If you make many different recipes, your guests will have less of each. If you have only five dishes, your guests will eat quite a lot of each. If you have a buffet of thirty dishes, your guests will probably only take a small spoonful of each dish.

You can estimate how much food for a party quite well if you know how many people are coming and how much they are likely to eat. Round up your guesses rather than rounding them down because it is better to have a bit of food left over than running out before everybody has finished eating!

Have some bulk food items on hand, like bread for a sit-down meal or nuts and olives for a buffet. These are filling foods, which people can eat if they are still hungry afterwards.

Party Food Portion Sizes

Six bites per guest is a good allowance for an appetizer. Seven ounces of meat or fish, an ounce and a half of grains, an ounce of undressed salad, five ounces of potatoes and four ounces of vegetables per person is about right for the main meal. For dessert, allow everyone five ounces of ice cream, four ounces of creamy dessert like mousse or a slice of cake or pie. These measures are just to give you an idea because some people have a big appetite and others have a small one.

More Party Food Tips

* Do not repeat the main ingredient at a dinner party. For example, do not serve a pork appetizer followed by a pork main dish.

* Offer both cold and warm foods if you are having a buffet.

* Offer different food textures with the buffet or meal, so you have a range of soft, hard, crispy, and crunchy food items.

* Using different colored foods is a great way to make your dinner table or buffet table look exciting.