Cooking for a large crowd

How much are you planning to cook, which smoker?

The loins will hold fine. I doubt that they'll finish exactly 1 hour prior, but if you do as you say even if they finish a 2 or 3 hour early, and keep the size of the cooler small, they'll hold the heat. Chicken timing could be a little harder. Maybe hold one batch and cook some to be hot for the 2nd pass through the line. All that meat will tend to keep the temp at a safe level inside the cooler.

You in a real touchy area, if you're not a professional caterer. While it's fun to BBQ for family and friends, doing it for a company can put you in a different category. Depends on the town Health Dept rules, size of the company, all the fun stuff you don't want to think about. Something goes wrong and the company and you are at risk. BBQ is fun, until you do it like this and something weird happens (not likely, but it can)

Unfortunately, I am a smokette owner looking to buy the FEC100, but waiting on permission from the better half. For this event I will be using a couple large rented gas grills.

Thanks for the advice on the pork loin, and I will shoot to get these down a couple hours in advance and hold it.

The chicken I am pretty comfortable with to get it done as I need it and since I will be brining it, it will give me a little extra room if I overcook it a bit. I have had about 10 practice runs with the chicken on the grills I will be using and they have cooked pretty much in the same amount of time every time I have cooked it.

As far as the legal rules, it is not officially a company event, so the health department says we are fine and have no worries. It is considered just a normal party of friends. But

I am planning on cooking 50 lbs of chicken, 30 lbs of pork loin, and about 40 vegetarian black bean burgers. We have a wide range of diet restrictions and it seems most people coming said they do not eat pork.

quote:

Originally posted by SmokinJ:
I am planning on cooking 50 lbs of chicken, 30 lbs of pork loin, and about 40 vegetarian black bean burgers. We have a wide range of diet restrictions and it seems most people coming said they do not eat pork.

Unless it's for religious or personal reasons, and it's just because of taste, maybe a couple of Pork Butts would convince them.

For the lions, definitely brine them and cook them to no more than 155 if you're holding them.

Good luck.

quote:

Originally posted by SmokinJ:
most people coming said they do not eat pork.

What kind of crazy a#$ people are you hanging out with?

From Smokin Okie - "For the lions, definitely brine them and cook them to no more than 155 if you're holding them."


Now Smokin Okie is telling me he can get a whole lion in that little smokette. And I wonder how he gets it to sit still long enough to brine it. Gotta see that....

Smokn J, I cook chicken thighs a lot for my catering biz. Consider cooking the thighs a day before the event, right until they hit the low end of done temp. Than chill them quickly out of the danger zone. Day of the event; water down some BBQ sauce with some chicken stock, and re-heat your chicken in a pan or oven until back up to temp and ready to serve. The sauce and stock will eliminate dried out chicken. And re-heating it will allow you to tend to what-ever else needs to be done prior to serving. I've used this method for that last 7 chicken cooks that I've done, and it's worked flawlessly. Not too mention, people have raved about it.