Re: portions

Here is a snippet from an email prisonchef sent me when I had that same question....

"here's an ez rule of thumb on quantities and so far it has never failed me. since you are using precooked meat it has worked like a charm for me at the prison (and other places too).
figure 6 ounces for a really nice sized sandwich.
take the number of people that you have and multiply that by 6 (your serving size).
now to get pounds required is ez.
just take your answer from above and divide that by 16 (which is the number of ounces in a pound)
that number is how many pounds of pre cooked meat you need.
now take that number and add 10% to it and this will give you a safety margin."

He went on to say:

" if i am not doing precooked meat here is how i go about it
figure shrinkage at about 25%
figure trim at about 10%
that's approximately 35% waste
add that to your your serving size and it comes out pretty close to how many pounds that will have to be cooked."

Hope that helps. As a side note, I have heard that amounts for a sandwich from 4-6 ozs.

bob

Thanks Caddy!

That's exactly what I was looking for.

I'm never worried about left overs at home because I can vac-pak and freeze. What I have to worry about is how much of other peoples' mulla I spend. Plus at the end of 1 of our parties the last thing on my mind is tending to left overs....lol.....I usually have a hard enough time of tending to myself at that point.

heck,
this is what i get for working too many many hours!!!
lol,caddy quoted me just right!!!!
by the way we got our trailer but now we can't get a generator
jack

quote:

Originally posted by prisonchef313:
[qb] heck,
by the way we got our trailer but now we can't get a generator
jack [/qb]

pc.. you might go to a surplus RV place.. they are fairly common.. and see if you can find an Onan that has been pulled out of an old or wrecked RV. Onan makes a pretty good product. They are available to run with gas, diesel and propane. If you have propane in your cookshack.. this might be a great way to go.

Onan's are not portable.. they are usually built-in's for RV's. They may take up too much valuable room built into a shack. You could have a heavy duty addition added to the back of the shack and set the generator on that.. or set it in the back of your truck. This can be set a bit away from the cookshack for quieter operation in and around the shack. These work well with a good muffler.

Bill

I think prisonchef is right on with portion size, but I would suggest that meat or other higher food cost items be toward the end of the serving line. I've seen people fill a plate with chicken and BBQ then not have room left for beans, slaw, rolls, etc. Not the way you want things to go. 6oz looks like a lot of meat when sitting beside other goodies on a plate, but 10oz of meat might not look like much if it goes on the plate first.

todd,
man you are a guy with the heart of a chef!!!!!
i learned from my old german chef that buffet lines were ez to setup. yep, just what you said, cheapest to most expensive in order. and man would you love what he taught me doing a carving station for meats lol
jack

weewilly,
after hearing what ocala bills wife said about an onan generator i got to pass on that one. but thanks for trying to help me.
i guess that is the one thing i love about this site. everyone here seems to try to help the other guy out and it restores my faith in humanity just coming to this site
jack

There are good Onan's and bad ones.. good and bad Chevy's and Ford's. These things get put in thousands of RV's every year. I've read a few stories about problems on the RV sites.. but, with all my RV'ing (and I do a lot), I have NEVER ran into anyone that has had a problem.

YMMV...

Good Luck however you go.. Bill