Advice on doing a first BBQ for a crowd

Scott You will want to figure about 3 people per lb of cooked pulled pork per person plus 10%. So for 100 people I would figure about 37-40 lbs of cooked pork. So I would start off with about 80 lbs of raw butts. This will be about 9 to 11 butts. For sides figure 4-6oz of each side per person.

You can burn wood or coal, if burning charcoal I would still add a gew sticks of wood per hour. If you want to have them ready to eat at 11:30am I would start them at about 9pm the night before and if they are 8 to 9 lb butts they will take around 12 hours at 230 degrees this will put them done at 9am then wrap them in a towel and put them in a cooler to rest until time to eat. Cook the butts to an internal temp of 195 degrees.

If you have a small store bought smoker you may have problems cooking in the cold weather and wind. Good Luck

What kind of equipment are you going to be cooking on? Do you have the equipment to hold all of the hot and cold foods at proper temps? The more information you can provide the better info you will get.

If this is your first cook, I would think doing pulled pork and pulled chicken is a better route than ribs, unless you have a large enough cooker to pull it off. A lot easier as you can do a lot of prep the day before, which means less effort when your clients are there.

The cooker and equipment is pretty important to really answer your questions. Four people for a 100 person even seems a little light if one or two of you want to spin off and schmooze. Also, what about beverages, utensils etc...

It scares me to have no more experience than listed and want to have a succesfull event. To be honest if you told me the plan as a customer, I would run away pretty fast. It sounds like a good idea until you ruin some food or miss a important health detail, like holding temps. for instance. Unless one can high heat cook on decent equipment, it's going to be a long night, even with good weather. I'm not sure about you, but when I stay up and cook all night without sleep, it's best to avoid customers that I rely on for income.I sure wouldn't want them as test dummies for novice cooks. Maybe someone close with more experience can help you. You can practice cook on one or two butts, but what about putting ten, twelve on at once? With even temps. they will be done at different times. And then cook other foods? As said ,have you enough coolers, cambros, or other holding units? $200.00 won't cover much. Sorry to sound negative, but it's better to be real instead doing something regrettable. Whatever you decide, just keep the people you're serving safe. Hope it works out. Steve.

That's a very good decision on your part. Far too much risk for your first "catering" gig. I remember my first paid gig was for a friend of mine hosting a poker party for 20 and I was really nervous. That was almost four years ago. Over time, I've accumulated more equipment and experience so that groups of 100 or more are no big thing. Take it slow and find a mentor to help you avoid the usual rookie mistakes. You'll get to the point where you can cook the big projects in due time. Best of luck with your party!

PCDoctor_1979 said:

Take it slow and find a mentor to help you avoid the usual rookie mistakes. You'll get to the point where you can cook the big projects in due time.

PHP:

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For discussions sake... what would be some of those rookie mistakes? Besides the obvious ones of having enough time for cooking the meat and holding temps...

First of all, thanks for showing some sense. Your customers are important, or you wouldn't be doing this. Next, try to mix up some variations, so everyone won't have to eat the same thing. 100 people rarely like the same thing. Sounds like your menu will be diverse. Also buy some good therms. to check your chicken and anything else, like burgers to ensure proper cooking. So many think they can tell and can't. Just be safe and you'll have a much better time Wish you all the luck possible and I really think you're going with a better plan. Oh and rookie mistakes: trying to be coherant when dead tired, not being fully prepared,not enough help, equipment and supplies, experience, no insurances and permits if needed. Mentoring is so important, even if you learn for peanuts. Steve.

In addition to what ssbbqjuy pointed out, another common challenge is time management. How long does it really take to prep all the sides, pull pork, slice brisket, setup of the serving line, etc. etc. The first few times you will probably find your self running around like a headless chicken. It gets exponentially more complicated when you add in employees that are supposed to be "helping". :becky: Once you develop some standard procedures, things go much more smoothly and at a predictable pace from which you can create a work schedule so you are on time.

Captain P.J. said:

For discussions sake... what would be some of those rookie mistakes? Besides the obvious ones of having enough time for cooking the meat and holding temps...

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The ones I know of...

1. The food is not ready on time, or is never ready.
2. The customer expected one thing, you delivered something else.
3. Someone gets sick or refuses to eat the food due to temperature or serving issues.
4. You over-estimate your time and abilities and do not get to the event on time (I actually pulled this stunt this year and I am not a true rookie, just screwed up)
5. You are crabby and think you are hiding it
6. Not enough food

Now, on number 6, I have had issues with. Some folks are pigs and no reasonable amount of estimating while considering profit can allow for enough food. Also, in catering my sister's wedding, for some reason, despite everyone asking, nay, demanding vegetables (for some reason, the assumption was Bob will just have meat) not one person other then me ate vegetables. There were complaints that there were not enough stuffed mushroom and roast beef. And wedding cake! Who has thirds of wedding cake? Still, many times new to catering folks do not allow for enough food.

Well I guess I’ll add my rookie mistake to the list. I did a fund raiser for a buddy last year. Made pulled pork and chicken for about 150 people. Knew it was going to be a lot of meat and I had two problems. #1. Limited equipnemt (I had to travel 3 hours to event) and #2. Time.
I did not want to be late with getting it done, so in my very logical thinking process I figured I’d smoke the pork the day before the event and reheat the pork while smoking the chicken. Everything went pretty good with the pork. I had 1 gal ziplock bags to put pulled pork into and plenty of ice and coolers to get it all cooled quickly.
Yea, right. I somehow despite having 2 others helping me I missed about 3 shoulders worth of meat in one of the smokers that I did not find until the next morning. Boy that was not a good way to start the day. Should have known something was wrong when I managed to just barely get all of the meat into the coolers with the ice and not have anything left over.
Oh, almost forgot I also smoked the pork to about 170 so that it was done but not tender.(I figured it would cook more on reheat and I did not want it getting mushy)
Yea right. It was very hard to pull but I had to so I could get it in to the zip lock bags and cooled down. Then the next day at the event I spent a lot of time chopping up the pork chunks into smaller pieces so they would reheat and cook faster, while also trying to get the chicken smoked. I managed to make it all happen and had no complaints and dozens of compliments. But know I know I would have been better off starting the whole thing the evening before and wrapping the pork as it was done and putting it into coolers then starting chicken as needed. It would have meant less sleep for the event but much less stress.
some lessons need to be learned the had way. but make sure you really do learn from them the first time.

You've got to either keep it hot, or cool it completely then reheat. If you let things partially cool and stay there too long you may be risking getting people sick. Reheating to whatever temp you like won't undo the damage caused by letting pork sit in the danger zone. You can kill the bacteria, but you can't remove their toxins with heat.

Short of pulling an allnighter, here's what I would do.
Plan your cook so that your butts are done about 8 hours before you want to serve them. Wrap in foil and toss them in your 120qt cooler covered with several towels and go to sleep. They will hold in a good 7 day cooler for 8-10 hours.
Get to where you are going in plenty of time and pull the butts right before you serve them.
You'll get "some" sleep and won't take the chance on letting the pork cool.. and won't have to reheat the next day, saving you time for other stuff.

If you are planning on doing this very often.. keep an eye out at used restaurant auctions for a big proofing box with a heater. They won't cook your meat, but they will hold at whatever temp you like for as long as you like.

Your call.. I'd keep it hot.. but if you do plan on cooling it, I'd probably plan on using some bags of ice to help the refrigerator. I doubt a regular refrigerator will cool that much meat quickly enough if it all goes in hot at the same time.
Our health department rates cooling and reheating a higher risk category than just cooking and holding for just that reason.

Just my 2¢ here, but unless you've got a commercial fridge in your garage - it's not going to cut it for cool down. Residential fridges do not have the cooling capacity needed to properly down the temp in the necessary time - especially not 30 - 40#.

To be honest if it wasn't for customers I'd almost be inclined to say go for it. But I'll be honest. You're taking a big risk cooking for that many customers not having much experience feeding that type of crowd.

I've seen some things like this go bad wrong. A couple of years ago I worked in the oil and gas business and our company had a safety meeting for a lot of the company men from these large oil and gas companies such as Petrohawk, Chesapeake, XTO etc. Well, the company was going to serve lunch and rather than calling a caterer who was established, known and been doing it for quite some time they hired one of their "buddies" who was "about to get into the catering business" to do it. The guy was going to serve chicken, sausage and brisket with sides.

Long story short. None of the food was ready on time or at the same time. The brisket was undercooked, chicken luke warm and the sausage was the best thing he had. You could tell the guy was in over his head and had no idea what he was doing with regard to preparing everything where the entire selection would be ready to serve at once.

Safe to say it was quite embarrassing for the company...

absolutely agree with previous post. if you are going to cool it DO NOT PUT IT IN TO YOU HOME FRIDGE!! it will run all night long and not cool it. keep it warm or cool it completely. also 1 more problem to consider. when you cook so much meat it will take a lot longer than you expect. usually when i smoke i am only doing 2 shoulders. when i did that fundraiser i had the smokers packed and did not take into account how much longer it was going to take to cook the stuff. mid way through i even cut the meat into much smaller chunks top speed thing up. good luck with what ever you decide.