Easy cheap recipes for larg numbers

doelani

I help out in a drop in centre, no charge for meals although some do "donate" a few £ if they do not give anything that is fine. We get by on these donations plus contributions of food from volunteers who work in it.

To give you an idea we have, tea, coffee, biscuits, buns, cake. For lunch we have soup and stew, then a desert.

Looking new ideas of what to make that will not cost a fortune and easy to make and serve .

We have a full kitchen but equipped like one at home so normal sized hob and oven. We also have soup kettles which we use to serve soup and stew.

Normally we have between 15-25 people per day ( open 2days a week ) so we aim to have food for he 25. Lunch served over 1.5 hour period so need to keep food warm until served as everyone does not come in at once.

Going to make cottage pies, have made this once and went down well, so menu now looks like..


Stew....
Soup.....various flavours , veg, lentil, pea and ham, leek and potato
Cottage pie.

Rice pudding
Cake and custard
Trifle
Bread and butter pudding and custard.



The clientele can vary from 18-80 age group so we tend to stick to plain food.

Anyone any ideas for cheap easy to make meals easy to keep warm ?

FairyPrincessk

Not sure if these would count as plain, but what about pasta bake/lasagna/ziti, jacket potatoes, chilli, or risotto? I think there was a thread on a similar topic--although it might have been on buffet food for large events but it might provide inspiration...but not sure what to search for. Perhaps someone more experienced can help:)

SailorSam

pasta and rice dishes, curries, pizzas,

ragz_2

You could probabaly get 25 baked potatoes in a normal oven... not sure what you'd top them with that would be cheap.

Kitchenbunny

Seconding jacket potatoes here - with a variety of toppings that would work out fairly cheap. You could then offer a choice of a topping like grated cheese, beans or tuna mayo, and then on really cold days serve the jacket potatoes with stew for maximum warming food. I remember watching the Hairy Bikers Meals on Wheels programme a while back that had some good ideas for catering for large numbers with one or two meal options - the link to the pages on the BBC website is here

Hope that helps, and all the best.

KB xx

doelani

Thanks for replies, baked potatoes sound good.

elantan

until very recently ( monday in fact) we worked at a soup kitchen every month, our age group was from birth till death ( sadly we often had yong kids aged 5 or so in) ... we took in a chicken curry and rice ( boiled and fried) for the service users .. it went down a storm ... with people constantly wanting more .. very easy to make but very effective ...

other team members would bring in sausage and onions with chips, lasagne, pasta dishes etc ... we would make the stuff at home and bring it in ensuring it was reheated to the correct tempreture

Seanymph

snip chipolata sausages up into half inch bits - fry with onions and peppers, garlic and maybe chili - add tomato tinned/passata - stir in pasta, top with cheese if wanted and bake.

It doesn't take many sausages.

I would say start with cheap ingrediets - I am currently buying sacks of potatoes for £4 at the farm shop, and sacks of onions for \£2.50 - cauliflowers are 5 for £1.50.......... so I'd do cauliflower cheese, or baked potatoes, or sliced potatoes with cheese alongside something else.

RAS

Proper macaroni cheese? You can serve it with a salad or veggies if you want.

Or a pasta bake made with white sauce with bacon, mushrooms, ham or chicken. A little bit of cheese on the top makes it nicer.

What I call a potato or veggie bake but the posh one is called Jansen's temptation. Layer potato and other finely sliced lightly cooked (4 minutes)veggies (onion, parsnip, turnip or celeriac are nice) in a baking tray with either grated cheese or bacon or ham bits and then almost cover with milk or with white sauce and cook until done all the way through.

For puds, put a notice up on your local allotments and see if you can get free fruit for crumbles and puddings - starting with rhubarb and ending with late keeping apples.

JulieGeorgiana

Whenever I have a large amount of people celebrating I fall back on Lasagne. I fed 18 people at my husbands confirmation REALLY cheap!

babyshoes

Don't forget you can s-t-r-e-t-c-h out mince dishes with lentils, oats, soya mince and finely chopped or grated veg such as carrots, courgettes, mushrooms etc. I also always add extra onion and tinned tomato to my bolognese. Also, it doesn't always have to be all beef mince - try mixing in yellow stickered turkey or pork mince.

If as suggested above you are going to ask at local allotments for fruit, you can also ask for veggies - things like courgettes are always causing a glut in season, and even if very overgrown they are fine for bulking out stews and mince dishes. Perhaps some of the volunteers could plant courgettes at home? They are super easy to grow! Salad veg is also easy to grow and might provide a nice change in summer.