Based on someone else's thread about reheating food for 200, I thought I better start getting some ideas for my daughter's wedding on May 16 - she is still saying that I am making all the meat!
Basically, the plan right now is that I have to smoke pulled pork and pulled chicken for 200 folks for the wedding dinner, and I am most certainly not smoking the day of the wedding with the ceremony at 4pm, followed by dinner. Thankfully, I did inspect the kitchen at the venue today, and they have 2 large warmers that hold 4 or 5 full steam table trays each. I just gotta figure out how I will get meat I make and pull or shred in advance reheated and into the steam table trays the morning or afternoon of the wedding.
Right now I am thinking I will smoke the week before, pull all pork and chicken, vacuum seal it all (which compresses it a lot), and freeze. It will go from deep freeze to coolers for the hour drive to the venue at sunup, and I am thinking using 2 Anova circulators in two large coolers (I will make a hole for Anova in the lid), and the vacuum bags go into a bath at say 140F or 160F, to get the still cold meat warmed up. I would do that around noon. The volunteer ladies (all friends) staffing the kitchen then just have to pull them out, and dump the contents into the steam table trays (which I will have foil liners in), fluffing it up as needed, in the remaining hours before the wedding, and by 4pm, all the meat and hot sides are in the warmers or oven.
I am also thinking that I need to throw into the wedding budget the purchase of a new Weber Smokey Mountain 22", to increase my cooking capacity! . I'll have to figure out how to sneak that past the women folk though, as the money is going out now faster than it is coming in...
Basically, the plan right now is that I have to smoke pulled pork and pulled chicken for 200 folks for the wedding dinner, and I am most certainly not smoking the day of the wedding with the ceremony at 4pm, followed by dinner. Thankfully, I did inspect the kitchen at the venue today, and they have 2 large warmers that hold 4 or 5 full steam table trays each. I just gotta figure out how I will get meat I make and pull or shred in advance reheated and into the steam table trays the morning or afternoon of the wedding.
Right now I am thinking I will smoke the week before, pull all pork and chicken, vacuum seal it all (which compresses it a lot), and freeze. It will go from deep freeze to coolers for the hour drive to the venue at sunup, and I am thinking using 2 Anova circulators in two large coolers (I will make a hole for Anova in the lid), and the vacuum bags go into a bath at say 140F or 160F, to get the still cold meat warmed up. I would do that around noon. The volunteer ladies (all friends) staffing the kitchen then just have to pull them out, and dump the contents into the steam table trays (which I will have foil liners in), fluffing it up as needed, in the remaining hours before the wedding, and by 4pm, all the meat and hot sides are in the warmers or oven.
I am also thinking that I need to throw into the wedding budget the purchase of a new Weber Smokey Mountain 22", to increase my cooking capacity! . I'll have to figure out how to sneak that past the women folk though, as the money is going out now faster than it is coming in...
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