Help! Catering ideas needed for a Baptism reception at home

i1189

It did rain! We have a "smoking shelter" outside, so the barbecues were in this, and we ate in the house.

Mummy_Jo

We have considered bbq but the weather has put us off. The last few years the weather has been awful for the bank holiday weekend.

pookienoodle

Hi again what cut of beef are you going to use and what size joints are you looking at?
Gravy in the slow cooker is a good idea.
Also you could roast some baby new potatoes and then stick cocktail sticks in them as if you only do beef rolls you will need a lot of beef .

Do you know anyone who has a slicing machine you could borrow as you will get better portion control than hand slicing. hand slicing beef for 50 is hard work ( i am on maternity leave from my job as a chef and I am loving not cooking sunday lunch for the masses!)

morganb

For my sons Christening in October, we did the following:
greek salad (big bowl)
prawn cocktail (big bowl)
sliced turkey and sliced beef, which the butcher cooked and sliced for me, and it was considerably cheaper than buying it from the supermarket and, as it was all prepped, was no hassle at all
Several loaves of nice seedy bread; a couple of nice crusty loaves, all sliced for me at the supermarket.
Various pickles

Christening cake and a bowl of strawberries.

Very very easy work; came to about £2 maximum per head, and everyone commented on how lovely the food was. Best thing was that it took about an hour to put together; most of it was done the day before, I prepared all the ingredients for the greek salad and then just combined them on the day. Prawn salad all done the day before.

Mummy_Jo

I was going to buy topside - a catering size pack from makro. I will probably ask the butcher there what s/he recommends. It is quite cheap. We already buy our beef from there and cut the pack into three and freeze. My guess is that we will need something bigger than what we normally buy which is around 3 kilos.

Mummy_Jo

I find my local butcher very expensive for sliced meat. Did he do you a deal? It is infact cheaper for us to buy the meat at the supermarket. His meat is lovely though

I wish I'd picked up the cheap meat slicer at LIDL a few weeks ago...

morganb

Yes, we did do a deal; I told him it was for 30 people, asked for his best price and told him that I'd be speaking to the other butchers in the area! He did me a good price, quite below what he would have charged 'in shop' if you see what I mean. It's definitely worth giving him a go; and he didn't charge me extra to slice the meat. This alone saved me about 3 hours!!!

Mummy_Jo

Thanks will pop into town and talk to him. BTW how much did he charge?

jpwhittle

i did jacket potatoes for my little boys blessing. it was last febuary but they went down a treat and we had nearly 200 people there. quite easy to do and go with just about anything. everyone loved it . just an idea hth

Lagerlegs

Is there, a company near you that does hog roasts ? I know you were worried about the weather but if you have a couple of gazebos, or a bit of a homemade shelter, it would be OK. We went to a party in November, it didn't rain but it was cold and they had a hog roast, french bread, baps, salads and it was gorgeous, paper plates and no clearing up, they provide the oven for the hog not sure how much they are though, just a though