Whether cooking for a crowd or just for yourself, there are many resources that can come in very quite handy when you’re reading, using, tweaking, or making a recipe. I can tell you that these resources become even more valuable when you’re developing recipes.
I find a lot of helpful information in my forages across the internet and figured it might be handy to share it with you lovely people. I’ll host the growing list Resources page, but plan to add to the list as things cross my radar. Here are some of the resources that help me regularly.
External Resources
Conversion Helpers
Making Egg Substitutions for Different Egg Sizes from get cracking Egg Farmers of Ontario
- As someone who regularly uses jumbo eggs when standard recipe conventions call for large, this conversion helper makes it much easier for me to both scale up and down recipes.
Baking Powder versus Baking Soda from Arm & Hammer’s How To Articles
- You probably know that Baking Soda and Baking Powder are not the same thing. However, if you ever need to substitute one for the other, it can be useful to understand how they differ and how you would need to go about a substitution for a successful outcome. I found this explanation and conversion guide to be particularly well laid out and easy to follow.
Sous Vide Cooking Guides
Sous Vide Sausages from Serious Eats
- We do a fair amount of Sous Vide Cooking because it’s so easy, mess-free, and precise for cooking, generally a great way to hold food at temp until you’re ready for it, and a super easy way to thaw frozen foods. My go to temperature guide for cooking sausage is this one from Serious Eats. It gives you a nice table laying out what texture you’ll get from various time and temperature combinations.
Sous Vide Steak Guide from Serious Eats
- While there are various ways to cook steak, our favorite is Sous Vide. It comes in particularly handy when we make steak for a crowd because it allows us to cook them to the desired temperature and safely hold them there until we’re ready to eat. I love this Sous Vide Steak Guide from Serious Eats for its thoroughness. It provides some great charts to help you figure out to what temperature and for how long you need to cook a particular cut of steak to get your desired result.
How to Sous Vide Chicken Thighs (Bone-in and Boneless) from A Duck’s Oven
- While I’ve raved several times about the benefits of sous vide cooking, much of the time, the recipes focus on beef and pork. It’s really wrong for me to neglect chicken from that line-up. Cooking chicken sous vide is a wonderful way to infuse flavor and make sure it gets to exactly the right temperature. No trying to stick a probe thermometer in just the right spot. It’s awesome when cooking chicken for a crown.
- This post lays out a very helpful list of options for time and temperature to give you just the texture you want. I recently used this guide on some bone-in chicken thighs for use in Chicken Tinga.
Quantity Helpers
Cooking For Crowds For Dummies Cheat Sheet from for dummies
- One of the things that can be a challenge when cooking for a dinner party or any kind of party is determining how much food to plan for your guests. Even if you cook for crowds on a regular basis, it can be helpful to have a quick reference to check when you’re making your grocery list. I really like this Cheat Sheet from Cooking For Crowds For Dummies. It covers appetizers, mains, sides, desserts, and beverages.
Cooking Temperatures
Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service
- The best way to know when your food is done is often to check its internal temperature. While the rules of home cooking are not hard and fast, it is helpful to know what the official guidelines are for different types of food. When in doubt, one of the tools I reference is this “Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart” from the USDA.
Ingredient Information
A Brief Tour of Mexican Cheeses from The Spruce Eats
- This article provides a helpful, easy to understand overview of some of the most commonly found (in the U.S.) Mexican cheeses.
- I don’t know about you, but trying to keep straight some of the cheeses that I don’t use on a regular basis can be a challenge. Although I’m always up for just trying a cheese to see what it tastes like, knowing things like which ones melt and which ones don’t can come in handy when you just want to get one cheese at the store rather than several.
Chia seeds pack nutritional punch from Mayo Clinic Health System
- If chia seeds have not made their way into your repertoire, I encourage you to give them a try. They’re high in fiber and omega-3 fatty acids as well as low in net carbs.
- Some of my favorite uses: They make a great overnight pudding or a nice addition to cauliflower rice or scrambled eggs.
Exploring the Benefits and Uses of Nutritional Yeast: Powder vs. Flakes on BulkFoods.com
- Have you ever used nutritional yeast? I first encountered it when working on some dairy-free recipes. It brings a great savory flavor to a dish either as an ingredient or topping.
- I most often use it as a topping on soups or as an ingredient in a dairy-free recipe when I want the sharper notes that I would usually get from parmesan or sharp cheddar cheese.
Butter vs. Oil in Baking on Handle the Heat with Tessa Arias
- Do you ever look at a recipe and wonder why a particular ingredient is being used vs. something categorically similar? (Yep, I’m a nerd like that.) One such ponderance for me is when butter is used vs. oil in baking. I get the smoke point difference in cooking. But baking, what’s the deal?
- This article does a nice job of breaking down the answer to that question with side-by-side examples of what happens with one vs. the other.
What is Psyllium Husk? All about the Gluten-Free Binder! on Bakerita by Rachel Conners
- Psyllium Husk is one of those ingredients that I didn’t know I already knew about until I got into keto baking.
- This post provides a good overview of how to use psyllium husks in gluten-free baking. It also describes the difference between psyllium husk powder and whole psyllium husks and how to substitute one for the other.
Psyllium Husk 101 on The Loopy Whisk
- Here’s another great overview of psyllium and how to use it in baking. I like the way that this set of instructions talks in percentages of the weight of the flours you’re using. I often find that an easier way to work with baking ingredients.
Dinner Party Diaries Tips & Tricks
Party Prep Tips
Time and Clean-up Savers
- For warm or cold dips, consider preparing them in glass or ceramic bowls with airtight lids. When you’re ready for them, just remove the lid and then they can go in the oven, microwave, fridge, or freezer as needed.
- Use the dicing blade on a food processor to chop large quantities of vegetables.
- Use an immersion blender on soups rather than transferring them in batches to a blender or food processor.
- When you’ll be working on multiple recipes, group like preparation steps together.
- For example, if you need to chop onions, do all of that at one time.
- Label zip top bags with the recipe name, ingredient, and quantity before you start chopping, dicing, or slicing.
- Set up a zip top bag holder next to your cutting board and place the ingredients directly into their respective bags.
- Stick the labeled bags in the fridge until you’re ready to assemble and / or cook them.
- When you have a variety of ingredients to cut, chop, dice, or slice, order your work to minimize the number of “in between” clean-ups you need to do.
- Start with the produce, then move onto any cooked or cured meat products, and work with raw ingredients last.
- If you are cutting multiple, non-raw meat ingredients for the same recipe, clean up your cutting area as needed, but there’s no need to stop and wash everything since it’s all going in the same dish.
- On the other hand, when you’re working with raw meat, I suggest swapping out your cutting board or thoroughly washing it and your knife between ingredients.
- Use crockpot liners for slow cooker recipes other than soups.
Time and Cooking Space Management
- Prep casseroles in advance in a 9×13-inch dish with a lid and then store them in the fridge. You can either just prep them in advance or fully bake them and just reheat for serving. When you have a lot of recipes going on for a party, this approach allows you to make sure the food is done.
Hosting
- Always help your guests stay hydrated. While picking a wine, cocktails, whiskey, or beer pairing for your dinner can be a ton of fun; it’s also a great idea to keep filled water pitchers at each end of the table.
- Make a basket of slippers available to your guests.
- This is particularly useful if you are a no shoe house. (We don’t allow shoes in the house, but our floors can get a bit cool in the winter. The slipper basket provides
- To make up my slipper basket, I grabbed a variety of cute, washable slippers in a variety of sizes and tossed in some super thick, very large socks just in case something bigger is needed. I keep them in a little wooden crate near the door.
Preparation Savers
- Keep shelf stable, open-and-serve snacks on hand for easy, no effort appetizers.
- Things like roasted nuts–cashews, almonds, pecans, etc.–olives, giardiniera, hot or mild peppers in oil, and pepperoni make some of my favorite easy apps.
- All the prep work that these types of appetizers typically require is opening a jar, can, or package and putting them in your serving dish of choice. If you’re feeling fancy, you could use some classy little cocktail picks or utensils.
- These make some great appetizer choices on any occasion but especially when you’re tight on time.
Space Management
- Use a versatile Serving Caddy to streamline your buffet setup and keep plate and utensil sprawl contained.
- I like one that allows me to provide multiple plate sizes without having to set them on top of each other.
- Consider setting up a separate, smaller plate and utensil station on a dessert table.
- Place silverware with the handles up, so that people don’t need to touch the eating surface when picking them up.
Cooking for a Party
- Leverage Sous Vide Cooking to Make Steaks for a Crowd
- When we’re making filet for a dinner party, we like to buy a whole beef tenderloin.
- We cook the whole thing to rare (120°F to 128°F for 1 to 2.5 hours). Then we remove it from the bag, cut the tenderloin into individual filets of whatever thickness is desired. (We usually let our guests pick.)
- Then we finish them on the stovetop or grill to each guest’s desired level of doneness. This allows us to serve very individualized steaks cooked just in time to serve (a la minute).
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