I have to cook a meal for about 30 mostly teenaged boys. A few of them are vegetarian, so I can either make the whole meal vegetarian, or just have that as a side option. As you know, teens eat a lot, so this should be low cost, or the price of feeding so many will break the bank.
Any brilliant ideas?
When I fed a group of 12 teenagers, I made a bunch of sloppy joes with vegetarian burger crumbles.
Another time I made a meat lasagna and a vegetarian lasagna.
Chili is also easy to make vegetarian.
Or tons of pasta and a choice between meat and meatless sauce.
Yeah, for teenagers you probably can’t go wrong with a cheese lasagna and lots of garlic bread with extra marinara for dipping. It’s practically pizza, but they are less likely to miss the meat.
This is going to be a bit boring, but pasta hits all the marks, and it’s pretty easy to make a “pasta bar” thing where everyone can add whatever they want, so you could make up a bunch of meatballs that the meat-eaters can add in, if they’d like. Maybe today’s teens are different, but spaghetti was always a hit with me and my friends when I was that age.
I was going to say “baked ziti” but lasagna and pasta bar work too. Same basic idea.
In ziti or lasagna, I defrost a box of chopped spinach, squeeze out the water, and mix it into the ricotta cheese layer. Not only is the overall dish more nutritious, it stretches the ricotta cheese, which is one of the more expensive elements of ziti/lasagna.
I think pasta and garlic bread is a great idea. I’ll add a few more suggestions:
Taco bar – beef and/or chicken, beans, cheese, sour cream, salsa, guacamole, tortillas, taco shells, etc.
Make your own sub – meats, cheeses, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, hummus, pickles
I say go with the vegetarian as just an option so that you don’t have the few that are vegetarian wreck it for the rest of them.
Someone said chili, I would say maybe make two pots, one with just meat, one with just beans, that way if someone likes their chili pure, they get just meat. If they’re a heathen, a dab of meat, a dab of bean. If they’re vegetarian, just bean.
Maybe have a makeshift saladbar for a side dish with them just helping themselves adding what they personally want on top, tomatoes, bacon bits, croutons, whatever you can think of that would go on a salad but wouldn’t break your bank.
What are you on about? “Wreck” what?
Baked ziti and cheese lasagne are both things that are delicious without meat and the meat eaters won’t ever notice they’re meatless. Add garlic bread, salad and a pot of meatballs and Bob’s your uncle.
My older kids really enjoy it when we do sandwich bars–but if you’re feeding a passel of teenage boys, the fixings can add up fast. I think I’d go with pasta–lots of pasta, a couple of types of sauce, and some cheese to top it all. Add bread and a couple pounds of carrots with dip, and you have a decent meal on the (relatively) cheap.
A few of them are vegetarian? (And boys to boot?) Wow, I’ve never in my life met a single vegetarian teenaged boy. (That I know of) The fact that you got more than one in your group amazes me.
Anyway, I like the idea of a pasta bar. Maybe a salad bar too if you can swing it.
This is for a high school based robotics teams and (surprise!) many of the kids are either Chinese or Indian. All three of the Indian boys are vegetarian.
If I have to make a meal for a large number [in the 20-25 head range] I tend to go for vegan ‘minestrone’ and then have smaller bowls of stuff you can add in like cooked sausage crumbles, TVP sausage crumbles, sauteed peppers for those who like [vomit smiley here] bell peppers, shredded cheese [one of the mozzarella blends, or one of the mexican taco blends] and good shredded parmesan. Some good crusty bread and a tossed salad with stuff to add in also on the side like garbanzo beans, green peas, shredded onion, chopped peppers, shredded cheese and a couple different bottles of dressing, french, italian, ranch.
I make lasagna with one or both of these (“Gimme Lean Vegetarian Ground Beef/Sausage”). If I don’t say anything, it’s rare that anyone notices.
If that’s the case you might want to serve rice instead of pasta. Real rice, not Uncle Bens. Stir-fries are pretty easy if you buy bags of frozen veg a bottled sauce. As are some simple curries, especially now that there are good jarred sauces available.
Easy enough to serve with some pita bread, hummus, raw veggies.
You can take it a step further and make some tandori chicken legs, which is as easy as marinating the legs in the sauce, then slow roasting them. Doesn’t get much cheaper than chicken legs bought in bulk.
I’d say stir-fries would be a good idea if it were a smaller group. But 30 teenage boys? How many batches of stir-fry would you have to make to feed that many? I know my wok wouldn’t be big enough.
We have a 30 inch diameter commercial wok in our Pennsic camp kitchen gear. We picked it up at a Chinese grocery in Hartford. We use the gas ring from a turkey fryer or a good bed of coals on a fire ring.
I have found that it is easier to have vegetarian options rather than make the whole meal vegetarian. And I could see a situation in which you would have to announce to everyone that the “meat crumbles” are vegetarian, otherwise the vegetarians wouldn’t partake of that dish out of caution. Then you might find the non-veggies avoiding that dish if they don’t like the taste or thought of “meat crumbles”. So I would go with a spaghetti with a basic tomato sauce, meatballs on the side, salad bar and bread. This is the basic cheap option for feeding crowds of teenagers. Or, a selection of pizzas, some without meat, and salad. That gets a bit pricier but is favored by groups that don’t much like to cook.
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[/ol]“Meat crumbles”? Vegetarian stir-fry? Good lord. Hamburgers and hot dogs, and if they don’t like it they can go hungry! This is America!
Meat crumbles. Yeah, I got your crumbled meat right here…
My brain is geared for batches of 200, so saying 30 to mean seems easy. There are a few ways, and it doesn’t have to be a wok, and it doesn’t have to be in one single batch.
Often for meals of that size I’d just a turkey roasting pan, get it nice and hot, add oil and wait until it gets that sheen, then add the veggies. It’s also possible to toss the veggies with a bit of oil, put them on sheet pans, then roast them at 425.
Curry is even easier because you just simmer the veggies in the sauce until soft.
The real challenge is making rice for 30 because you’re looking at about 6-8 cups which is going to swell. But cooking pasta for 30, and eating sauce for 30 also sucks. The last thing I’d want to do is have to assemble that many lasagnas, not sure why that’s everyone’s default go-to.
Vinyl Turnip is right, you can do cheese burgers cheap and fast (just bake the patties), and have black bean burgers as the veggie option (please don’t offer people that veggie crap). Serve it with pasta salad which can be made the day before, some chips, and lots of ketchup.
