Looking for Food Ideas for a Crowd

The bbq joint sells sandwhiches 1/4 lb of meat = 25 lbs for 100 sandwhiches.
Beans and potato salad as sides are dirt cheap. If you have a bbq joint cater, they usually bring a big plate of sliced red onions, sliced pickles, whole pickled hot peppers as condiments. Big squeeze bottles of bbq sauce. They bring the meat dry and serve it in big metal chafing dishes over sterno. You can buy that at the party store. Big bowl of potato salad sitting inside a bigger bowl full of ice.
Baked potatoes aren't expensive at all, but the chili could get expensive unless you do a very thin one full of beans.

Hi! Do you know someone who can get you into Restaurant Depot? All you need is a business or 501-c3 to sign up. Yours has cushion meat (pork) for $1.19 this month. You can definitely use it for pulled pork. And gigantic potatoes in quantity. Just be careful, like everyplace else not everything is a bargain but their prices on meats, cheeses, and huge quantities of veggies is unbeatable.
Have fun! Have a party to make the food, many hands make light work!!

How about sausage wraps and Pulled pork?

Beans of some sort (baked) and then potato salad and a sour Cole slaw.. No mayo.. since you would already have mayo in the Potato salad.
Pickles and onions.

For 100 people you figure 1/2 lb. per person.. This takes care of the big eaters and the little eaters. It all evens out.

You would need some sort of kaiser roll.. Hamburger buns fall apart too easily, search for a grocery store bakery that already makes these.. For the sausage wraps, you need flour tortillas.

Where we live it would be BBQ Brisket sliced, BBQ chicken and sausage, with pinto beans, potato salad and Cole Slaw with sliced bread. Pickles and Onions and a lot of Iced Tea and a keg or bottles of cold beer.

Sounds like you are a great friend. Have fun!

Why not do a trial run with the BBQ pork this weekend and see how much it takes to feed your family, then you can multiply by # of guests and see if it is affordable.

One idea that came to my mind is that cornbread would be an easy side. Just bake it up in several 9 by 13 pans and serve with plastic ramekins of honey butter, or you can cut the cornbread into squares and pipe honey butter out of a frosting bag into a pretty swirl on top of each piece. If I think of any other ideas, I will add to this later.

Added: what about small mason jars for the soup or salad? You can have layered salads already put together in the jars, or if you do soup in them, you can have someone in the kitchen ladling chili into the jars using a funnel so it is less messy for guests and then bring a try of them out to the table.

Also, I have a cookbook called "Pastry Queen Parties: entertaining friends and family Texas style", and it seems like a lot of the food in there might be what you are looking for. Maybe go look at it at the book store and see if it is worth picking up.

If I were going to the trouble of cooking something labor intensive like pulled pork, I'd make sure the side dishes were easy and/or make ahead. Like potato salad instead of trying to time baked potatoes to be hot at the last minute. I think pulled pork is a great idea, however, there are those who don't eat red meat so chicken might appeal to more people. But pulled bbq chicken sounds like even more work than pulled pork so personally, I wouldn't do it.

Some side dishes that might go well with pulled pork sandwiches:
a nice variety of interesting rolls and breads for the sandwiches
potato, macaroni, or another pasta salad
green salad
fresh and marinated vegies and dip
variety of sliced cheeses
baked beans
corn on the cob
fruit platters are pretty, colorful and can be made ahead

A quarter pound of meat per sandwich sounds about right. However, I'd plan for extra because at my sister's wedding, the food was all gone before the family and wedding party had a chance to eat. Or maybe you can set some food aside to make sure there's some for everyone.

Just a suggestion, because I am doing this for my daughters next weekends grad party, did it for my own college (late in life) grad party 2 years ago and know many who have done it for all sorts of large gatherings......

A Taco Bar!

Ground beef with the taco seasoning (Sams club for both..Ortega makes a taco seasoning we get there in a big jug and use according to instructions..and we had a bit of salsa to the beef too!)

We get bags of shredded lettuce (no extra work, dump in bowls)

Shredded cheese and we also get big cans of the Nacho cheese to heat in crock pots

Cut tomatoes, cans of sliced olives, cut up onions, big things of sour cream, salsa, and we like the Mrs. Renfros jalapenos. I will aslo do a crock pot of black beans (did refried last time and had a ton left over, but all the black beans were gone fast). No rice for me, but many of my friends do a spanish rice as well.

bags of Doritoes plus we do the little snack bags for "walking tacos" as some of these events are backyard BBQ's

You get the idea. But time and again this has proven to be very economical. We then do some sort of fruit plate (I am doing fruit kabobs with marshmallows for fun at the grad party this weekend), some cookies and bars the lady relatives are donating, then a Root Beer Keg, bottles of water and thats it for us!

Good luck in what you decide, just thought I would offer a tried and true suggestion!

I did pulled pork sandwiches for my sisters baby shower- maybe 40 people. It was a hit (my MIL has a great recipe and the perfect vinegar-y cole slaw to go with). My mom made a bunch of homemade macNcheese on the side, it was great.

BUT, I was the one who made the pork and it was a bit of work- try to get the butcher to trim the fat so you don't have to spend the time doing that, but I made it ahead of time, in two crockpots at once, shredded it (took forever) and refrigerated the juice/sauce over night so I could spoon off all the gelatinized fat easily. Then I mixed up a bunch of the sauce (using the juice) and dumped it all back in the crock pots for the party. It was a lot of work, it takes awhile to shred pork and I am mostly a vegetarian so I got pretty grossed out after awhile shredding and shredding...
But most people love a pulled pork sandwich.
Not sure I would take on making that much food for 100 people! But maybe you are experienced in cooking "in bulk". I imagine you would need like 5 crockpots with good sized pork roasts in them to feed 100 people. depends what else is on the side. Macaroni and Cheese on the side is also cheap- pasta, cheese, butter, milk. Thats a LOT of pans of mac N cheese, people love to pile it on so you would probably need like 10 pans of it.
Cole slaw is very cheap to make. Cabbage. Again thats a LOT of shredding.
Good luck.

jalapeno poppers
bacon cheddar corn muffins
russett dill potato salad
quessadillas
funnel cake
baked beans
spinach salad
succotash

If you are really keen on doing soup, you could serve it in a mug or beer stein. These sometimes cost as little as 50c each at the dollar store, IKEA, Kohls, or your equivalent. With a bandana as a napkin, tied to a spoon. Add a sticker/ label and these can be at each place setting. double as serveware for the soup, and be an inexpensive useful favor.

think about gazpacho too. cold soup seems less precarious.

good for you for being such a good friend.
F. B.

See the Cookbook: Sharing Mountain Recipes, as the pages are bursting with recipes for a meal or to feed a large crowd. There are several chili recipes, large salad recipes (taco layered and fruit layered), affordable desserts and much more.

The recipes within are easy and affordable!

What about sloppy joes instead of pulled pork. Not the manwich kind, but real homemade kind. Ground beef is usually cheaper than better cuts of pork. I've got a fabulous sloppy joe recipe if you want it.

Cole slaw, potato salad, green salad, chips, carrots/celery & dip, etc.

Good luck & have fun!

I would think doing that much meat for 100 people would add up fast. Perhaps do a sandwich bar? Get several different sliced meats (and PB&J for the kids), breads, cheeses, condiments. You could probably find info. online re: how much to get/per person.

Go to the local library and go to the periodicals section. Look to see if they have the old issues of Taste of Home. The magazine used to have a page called Food for a Crowd or something like that.

I have used nearly every one of those recipes and they are wonderful.

Some of my favorites was Cheesy Apple Crisp, Oven Baked French Toast, Sloppy Joes for a crowd, there are tons of recipes in the old editions. They don't seem to have that page anymore in the editions I have seen on the shelves now.

They also have charts in the first couple of editions of the magazine that give the amount of food, such as how much ham to cook for XX people, or how many potatoes to boil for mashed potatoes for 50, etc...it was my best resource when I was activities director at church. I fed nearly 100+ each time I had a meal. It was very correct in the numbers too.

There are lots of resources online too.

Hi there! My husband and I actually cater BBQ for events such as yours! Lots of folks look for the same thing: affordable, non-picnic looking, but fun. Things you might need to consider: Pork is easy to purchase at Cosco or Sam's. Brisket is more specialized, but pork butts are pretty universal. You need to plan on folks eating about 6 oz of meat each, so how many you purchase depends on the size of the pork. Remember that your pork will shrink as you cook it by about 5-10 oz depending on the fatty nature of that cut of meat. Chicken is harder, takes more time to prep and pull/baise etc but might be cheaper. You probably need to have something for the resident vegetarian in you side dishes...you can always "dress up" the food with a fun but not picnic "y" presentation as well. We always do a tossed salad and mac-n-cheese for weddings for folks who want to go lighter or who have kids.

Good luck! If you have more questions you can PM me! :)

How about italian beef sandwiches? You can buy the meat from Portillos or the grocery. Warm up the juices separately, then put it in a large roaster in it's juice and it will stay warm for longer periods of time.

http://www.portillos.com/assets/pdfmenu/59DE6E1BB6B441228...