Demosthenes9
is One Chatty Farker
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2010
- Location
- Louisville
I think I would make less things, having made lots of things before and realizing how much work it is. Your special day though, congrats :thumb:
Well, I did something like 12 proteins mostly as "mains" last year and had a blast. That's what the photos were from stand. Standing in the pouring rain working the hell of one of my Ranch Kettles. Any way I do it, it'll end up being being a good amount of work as I'm expecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 - 100 folks.
My SV cookers will take some of the load off my shoulders. Take Picanha for instance. Usually, I do it pretty close to how it's done at Brazilian places. Skewer it raw and throw it on the roti. Let the outer surface brown up and the fat get crispy, pull it, slice of the face til I hit really rare meat then put it back on the roti to brown again. Rinse/repeat. For this, I'll SV'ed the sliced cap, skewer it, let it brown, then slice it all up.
Additonally, at past parties, I've always had a good selection of proteins, perhaps 5 or 6 different offerings as the "mains". That has me trying to all that protein cooked, ready and coming off the grills/smokers at the same time immediately one after the other so that folks going through the food line had everything to choose from. It actually gets to be a complicated dance trying to grill up 20 pieces of chicken, 24 ribeyes, 12 pork chops, 16 burgers and some hot dogs. At the same time, keeping up with 8 racks of ribs and 2 briskets on the smoker. Trying to time when to put what on, when to bank to indirect to put something else on, getting everything to finish at roughly the same time, then dumping the grills and smokers and getting all the food inside.
If things work out the way I'm thinking, I'll actually be able to focus on one dish at a time and in small batches to boot. Skewer and spin some Picanha, pull, slice, send it out. Next, some Kalbi. That'll only take 5 minutes to grill, so no hurries. When it comes off, move to bulgogi. That one will get a bit tedious and high maintenance, but I'm only planning on doing about 10lbs of it.
There will be some overlap as the Al Pastor will take some time to cook from raw. Wings will take an hour in the smoker. Haven't decided if I'm going to SV the ribs and/or brisket and finish on the smoker, or just smoke them. Either way, they'll be running in the background. But still, things will be spaced out a bit.
I guess it definitely does hurt that like many others here, I actually enjoy the cooking. The prep work leading up to it will be a bit tedious, but the cook itself ? To me, it's kind of like going white water rafting.