I’m a member of the Columbus Cottonmouths Booster Club, The Snakes are a SPHL (minor league) team, which means these kids aren’t rakin’ in the big bucks. After every home game, our B.C. provides a meal (preferably hot) for the visiting team, for them to eat on or before they get on the bus to go home.
I need ideas for relatively inespensive meals for 30+ people. Don’t worry about veran or allergies; we take care of that separately.
Meals need to be:
-something we can keep warm in a crock pot or over sterno
-healthy
-something you’d want to eat after playing hockey for 3 20-min periods-
-able to serve in a styroform “to go” box.
We try to serve a meat, a veg and/or a salad and a dessert.
It can get expensive, so we’re looking for ideas to feed hungry boys without breaking the bank. Help!
Well, for something like this I am a big proponent of the make your own burrito bar. Large chafers or crockpots filled with both or either ground beef taco meat and chicken in a green or red sauce, all properly seasoned of course, served with a buffet of warm tortillas, fresh chopped lettuce, tomatoes. onions, sour cream, shredded cheese, and hot sauce or salsa. Also serve some spanish rice and stewed cowboy pintos or refrieds as a side.
Our organizational potluck desserts used to work pretty well when we simply had every member bake something of their own choosing and bring it with them. That way the cost is spread pretty evenly and everybody can bring something of a variety from cakes to pies to cookies to jello, and their own specialties. Kind of like an anything goes bake sale.
Maybe… a leg of cold fried chicken, a pimento cheese sandwich, a scoop of cold potato salad, a scoop of cold coleslaw, and a scoop of cold baked beans. Remind them of where they are at… Surely everybody has their best rendition of that lunchbox down there.
I’ll second this. It can be as easy as cooking up lots of seasoned ground beef, rice, beans. If you have time you can simmer a bunch of chicken thighs which are extremely cheap with a can of chipotles. The downside I find to this style of food is that it has too many condiments.
A basic meat sauce with rotini is another option. Small pasta like that is easier to eat than spaghetti.
Meatloaf with mashed potatoes also works well. Both can be made extremely low cost. You can make them somewhat free form by rolling them up in foil so you don’t need much in the way of equipment.
I like the chili idea.
It depends a lot on what kind of equipment and staff you have. Couple other suggestions
*beef stew
*chicken pot pie (I use a biscuit topping instead of pie crust)
*shepherd’s pie
*tuna noodle casserole
I’ve got dozen more idea like this, let me know if you need recipes for large scale production.
There’s all kinds of stuff you can do with a crock pot. You can even make chicken noodle hot dish if you want. Or any other casserole or stew.
For cheap and nutritious, go for red (or black) beans and rice. Potatoes and onions make up the filler on some cooked ground beef with a veg and sauce or gravy.
A favorite of mine is the smaller version of a hot turkey sandwich. It’s called a turkey sundae. Put some chunks of turkey in the container, put a scoop of mashed potatoes on it, cover with turkey gravy and a bit of cranberry sauce. Warm and tasty!
My son’s cross country team has a tradition of having a pasta dinner at the home of one of the kids the night before every meet. This has the potential of having up to 100 kids show up, though it’s usually more like 70 - 80 or so. The host provides the pasta, and other families bring salads, bread, drinks, and desserts. The parents have all also kicked in a couple of dollars at the beginning of the year to cover the paper plates, cups, utensils, etc.
Anyhow, I would think that you could easily hold a nice spaghetti sauce — either a meat sauce or a marinara sauce in a crock pot. The spaghetti would be a need a little thought about keeping it in good condition. Perhaps you could just settle for mixing it in with the sauce, and dealing with the fact that it was not going to be al dente any more by the time it got served. I would think you could also pre-heat a lasagne or a penne casserole at home, and then keep it warm over sterno.
Thanks for the suggestions! I usually do lagasna; the first game of the season we did meatball subs with pasta salad. I like the burrito idea; I think I’ll do that my next time to cook.
We do a lot of pasta dishes; I don’t know a hockey player who won’t eat pasta!
A lot of Indian dishes scale up very easily (probably why so many Indian places have lunch buffets). Butter chicken or chicken curry would be super easy to make in large quantities and keep warm without diminishing quality. Serve with rice and some naan (Trader Joe’s has excellent frozen naan) and you’re good to go.
I use a modified* version of this recipe for butter chicken and everyone I’ve served it to loves it.
*I don’t use cilantro because I hate it and I halve the amount of tomato sauce and add about two tbsps of tomato paste. I also use only about a 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream. If made as written, I find it way too saucey.
I’m from a large family (ten kids). We would often have a get-together with my dad’s sister and her family (also ten kids). When it was Mom’s turn to cook, she would make a pasta casserole with egg noodles, ground beef, tomatoes, mushrooms, and various seasonings. She called it slumgullion (most recipes I can find online with that title seem to want elbow macaroni; maybe I’m misremembering), and she made so much of it that the only serving dish it would fit into was the roasting pan that she used for turkeys on Thanksgiving and Christmas).
I don’t have the recipe, but I’ll ask my sister if she does.
In the meantime, for thirty people, use four pounds of spaghetti, four pounds of ground beef, four cans each of chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, and tomato sauce. Brown the meat with a couple of cups of chopped onions, several cloves of garlic; drain and add spaghetti sauce ingredients. Mix the sauce and spaghetti together in the serving pan (cover it with shredded cheddar, if you like), and bake it all to get it heated through.
One of my go-to meals for large gatherings (I married into a big family, lord help me) is a dumbed-down version of jambalaya. If you drop the shellfish, you’ve still got a tasty, stick-to-your-ribs meal that can be eaten with just a fork, and you don’t break the bank. Rice is cheap, you can use the cheaper bits of chicken, and whatever sausage you can find on sale. Serve with coleslaw and a square of cornbread.
I’ll enthusiastically second the chili, pasta, and curry ideas. And you can mass-produce individual “pizzas” using pita bread for the crust, although for your purposes that would depend on being able to get large amounts of pita bread at a price within your budget…
I am a caterer, and could feed 50 people chicken, mashed potato, stuffing, gravy, corn, sweet-and-sour cabbage, salad, roll, and all related condiments for $4.25 a head. If all you want is Meat/Veg/Sweet you could go way cheaper.
Shop at a bulk store. I go to GFS, but whatever is similar. Chicken quarters are relatively cheap and can be cooked a dozen different ways. Rehydrated potatoes sound a little squicky, but they taste great and can be jazzed up any way you like. Plus, people love them; it’s comfort food.
Another good group food on the cheap is an egg strata, one with broccoli and one with sausage. Serve with some in-season fruit and you’re done for less than $5 a head easily.
