This year some friends have decided that we will be doing an Eid party together. It will be a potluck. We don’t have any idea of how much of each dish is needed and what to tell everyone. would really appreciate any and all help from you guppies (guppans).
How can we divide these things among the families. The men will be served separately while the women and kids will be served separately. The head count for the male section is 30 (teenage boys + men) and for the ladies side the head count is 30 (women + teenage girls) and 20 kids (below the age of 10).
Looking forward to replies from all you kitchen gurus… JazakAllah khair in advance.
Agree with Lusi its all meaty dishes. With Biryani you usually dont need to have Qorma. Qorma more goes with pulao. For kababs also try to stick to one variety. You can add some veggie dishes to the menu too. However if you guests are more meat lovers still menu in my opinion needs to be revised. These are all very heavy dishes. Probably omit Haleem. You can do some veggie/non meat variety as Achari Aaloo, Chikkar choley or bhagarey baingan. For gravy dish for those who like to have roti you can go with White chicken/lamb salan. I think if you want combo with Biryani then go with Palak gosht/Palak Paneer/Palak koftay. But yes as Lusi said you have to decide what are main dishes. I assume Biryani and a gravy dish??? Then you can have some veggie curry, Chicken roast and kababs as your side dishes.
20 kids are masha’Allah a lot, you can try making pizza cups for them, they will be very happy with that and some french fries to go with.
If Biryani and gravy salan are main dishes you need to make that in large quanity. for chicken roast you can just keep may be 10 pieces more that total number of people as there are other dishes too and same with kababs.
Ok , In essence you have 10 dishes, Salad and Raita are the easiest so we will leave that aside for the moment.
4 families = Biryani ( each one to prepare for 2o people )
4 families = Korma ( each one to prepare for 20 people )
4 families= Haleem ( each one to prepare for 20 people)
3 families = Chicken Roast + Raita + Salad ( each one for 25 people )
3 families= Bhiari Kabab ( each one for 25 pple)
3 families = seekh kabab ( each one for 25 people )
1 family = Sheer Khurma ( for 80 people)
1 family = Trifle ( for 80 people )
1 family = Shahi Tukray ( for 80 people )
That leaves you with one family , you choose what you want them to bring otherwise you can choose a dish from above and get them to do that. you could ask them to do salad and raita also .
Desserts use less ingredients and time to cook. Hence why I tried to remain fair cost wise, time wise and energy wise. Main dishes take longer time, more ingredients , more effort, hence each family doing a dish for 20 people will make it so much easier.
This menu has not been.decided by me it is by others and I can’t change it. It is by meat lovers and it is an eid party so all about the meat
Also what would be the best way to serve these dishes so they are warm. We don’t have chafing dishes. And the aluminum pans will not heat in the microwave
They are inexpensive and can be reused over and over by just replacing the foil trays. You can find them at any Party City/party supply store or the warehouse clubs like Sam’s & Costco
Lusi, I was there when the lady put forward the menu to others and they all had big smiles on their face at the mention of haleem.
In this group even Dawats don’t have noodles for kids. Noodles are only served at evening chai.
From what I remember everytime I have served a veggie dish at dawat for this group it has gone untouched. But meat stuff have been hits. Kids eat what elders eat
Do you think we could do simple pulao with biryani . Like 2 biryanis and 2 pulaos ???
Oh I don’t know if I mentioned this it is going to be lunch when this food is served.
Wire chafing dish racks…they are very common and readily available everywhere…i’m surprised you haven’t seen them before
It’s a the wire rack…you put a steam pan (also aluminum ) in first with about an inch of hot water..then drop in your foil pan of food…the the lit chafing fuel underneath keeps everything hot/warm. And each component is reusable.
Does anybody know of any app or thing that helps with potlucks. We have many potlucks for iftars and for Eid. Anybody know of a good way to distribute the food? We have been using Facebook so far.
In my family/friends circle we usually just send out a mass email or Evite for the party, and then we ask that each family pick appetizer, main, side dish dessert and sign up what you’re bringing. The amount of dishes required for each category is determined by the amount of people in attendance.
If the menu doesn’t make sense or there are too many of one type of dish we’ll tweak it and balance it out
If you are going to do half and half of any any dish , that will be very risky, what if more people want biryani and hardly anyone touches the pilao , or the other way round, so you gotta plan either biryani or Pulao ..
I agree with Lusi’s point about the dessert that I divided amongst 80 people .. Actually I would have thought that the people making this dish individually wont keep large portion size per person . but I guess its easier to just prepare each dessert for 60 people perhaps and that should sort it out ..
