Wedding for 215, no smoker: pulled pork, chicken, and sides

This is my first forum post, so I humble myself in the smoke of your experience:

I've done a ton of bbq catering/competition growing up and we've always used smokers for the meat. I have no equipment except for a personal smoker. The venue has more than enough ovens, so I was planning for the shoulders on just doing a brine, rub, and then oven for about 8 hours. They also wanted pulled chicken, so I was pretty much going to do it the same with boneless meat.

My questions:

215 people with pulled pork and pulled chicken, what is the normal breakdown when doing 2 entree meats? I was thinking about 90lbs pork (would serve 1/4lb cooked pp to 180 people) and 40lbs chicken (not sure exactly how much boneless chicken breaks down when cooked).

When cooking green beans for a crowd, do you use fresh or canned?

Anyone got a good foodservice scale macaroni and cheese recipe?

I appreciate any and all help/advice!

Thoughts?

See if you can rent/borrow a smoker somewhere. Pulled pork in the oven will not be the same as what your guests are probably expecting.

grillfella said:

40 lbs of boneless skinless leg meat will feed around 80 go with the canned beans and juice them up with bacon and some sliced links on top one big can of bushes or b&m baked beans will feed around 25

good luck brother

Click to expand...

thanks for the numbers. I'll keep that in mind.

PCDoctor_1979 said:

See if you can rent/borrow a smoker somewhere. Pulled pork in the oven will not be the same as what your guests are probably expecting.

Click to expand...

it's Western PA so I'm not too concerned. As much as I would love to smoke them, I've done a good single shoulder in the oven slow and low and it's turned out really good. What I lack in smoke, I'll make up in rub and pig sauce.

Ford said:

I'd start with 120 lbs pork. Chicken - use BS frozen thighs/breasts. Need about 70 lbs.

Use frozen green beans - I go to GFS Marketplace and get 10 lb boxes. Far superior to canned.

That's a lot of Mac and cheese.

Also that's a lot of food to keep hot. 5 full pans pork, 5 full pans chicken, 4-5 pans of beans and the same for mac and cheese. Make sure you can hold all that food safely. I assume you have serving chaffers for all this.

Click to expand...

That seems like a lot of pork and chicken, but you guys know more than I do. There's a GFS market not that far from me. I'll see what they have.

The facility we're using has 6 full ovens, 2 rolling hot boxes, and 2 knee-high cambros, so the issue isn't keeping food hot until served (in chaffers with sterno's), it's going to be timing and keeping it moist

Bbq Bubba said:

I will agree with Ford BUT!!!

Your really not selling this as BBQ i hope?

Click to expand...

Not selling as bbq. I told the couple it would be a slow cooked pulled pork and chicken with a vinegar-based carolina sauce.

I'll be serving bbq sauce on the side, but this is not bbq.


Thanks to all for your help. It still seems like a lot of meat, even when considering raw, but I'll trust your numbers. More is always better than less.