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just wondering if there are any chef websites out there which specialise in recipes for large quantities, 25+ portions, any recipes at all Entrees, Mains, Pastries or Desserts. Many thanks in advance for your time.

rumtscho
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Cristie
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    While not a direct answer to your question, I think you might want to look at the book [Ratio](https://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499953711&sr=8-1&keywords=ratio). This will teach you invaluable principles for taking 'everyday' recipes and scaling them up to larger batches. – Cos Callis Jul 13 '17 at 13:49
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    Generally, requests for resources are off topic network wide. They are list questions with no one answer and an infinite number of possibilities. – Catija Jul 13 '17 at 20:00
  • @Catija : Not all 'list' questions are bad. They were a HUGE part of this site when it first started out. "How do I ..." are typically list questions. If there's an "infinite number of possibilities" for this, why aren't there any other answers besides mine? And most of the ones that I listed suggest that they're appropriate, but are really crap. This is *not* the sort of thing that you can just search on Google or whatever and find 1000 good answers. – Joe Jul 14 '17 at 14:01
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    @Joe Sites change. Something being ok initially doesn't mean it's ok now. – Catija Jul 14 '17 at 14:07
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    @Catija : it's not the site that changed. It's the people that changed. Many of them came in from other stack exchange sites, and assumed that the rules from the other sites were true here. You asked about it when you first started here : https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2071/67 ; Typically the procedure on here is to judge the question by the answers given ... if they're all crap, close it. See https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3320/67. Also see https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1860/67 ; https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/q/76/67 ; – Joe Jul 14 '17 at 14:27
  • and https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/q/730/67 – Joe Jul 14 '17 at 14:27
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    @Joe After reviewing those, I don't see how this passes the tests Jefromi lays out. It's very broad. It's **all** bulk recipes. The OP does nothing to limit the question to any particular part of the meal, type of cooking (national origin, formal/informal, etc... ). This is too broad. – Catija Jul 14 '17 at 19:06
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    @Catija : it passes the test in that there haven't been 20+ answers. There's one. So if this is so broad ... where are the other people answering? – Joe Jul 17 '17 at 15:27
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    @Joe You can not base a question's quality on the answers. That's not how SE works. With your logic, I could make 10 crappy answers to this question just to get it deleted. – Catija Jul 17 '17 at 19:46
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    For me, it's hard to tell where exactly this falls. It *seems* pretty specific, but it's not an area where I have a ton of expertise, so I don't know exactly how much is out there. Joe's answer makes it look pretty broad, actually: he found a rather large number of sites just by searching, and I'm sure there are more out there that he didn't find. It's all posted as one answer, but it's still a lot of breadth. So overall I am relatively skeptical, as the test is not "are there 20 answers" but "could there easily be 20 answers?" and it seems like maybe yes. – Cascabel Jul 17 '17 at 19:55
  • @Joe I've tweaked your initial comment. It'd be helpful if you could avoid responses that can feel personal and adversarial. – Cascabel Jul 17 '17 at 20:02
  • The Ruhlman book? Terribly myopic towards animal-product-based, oldschool western food I think :) – rackandboneman Jul 19 '17 at 08:57

1 Answers1

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I have a few cookbooks for caterers that have this sort of thing. I've even gotten one from our library system (although not my local branch, I was at one of the larger ones)

So, using that term, I tried searching for 'catering recipe websites' had a bunch of false positives, but it did find :

A search for 'catering recipes' was a bit more helpful:

I'm actually pretty disappointed in most of these -- I'd have expected recipes for 'catering' to talk about what parts you can do in advance vs. morning of vs. last minute.

There are also websites w/ tips for caterers, eg. https://www.webstaurantstore.com/article/26/catering-menu-ideas.html

I also found a website for 'Essentially Catering Magazine', but many of the recipes they have serve less than 8 people : https://www.essentiallycatering.co.uk/recipes.php

I suspect that cookbooks might be a safer bet -- many of these have the 'look inside' option on Amazon, so you can see if they're what you're looking for:

Which also led me to Army cookbooks:

Update: A friend mentioned a website with recipes for school cafeterias. There are some pre made sauces referenced, but it starts at 25 people and includes instructions for advance prep and just before service: http://www.thelunchbox.org/recipes-menus/

Update 2: I've since learned that the preferred term seems to be 'quantity cooking', which helped me find:

Joe
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  • So the problem is that there are a lot of websites that *claim* to be about cooking for large numbers of people ... but the content doesn't match that claim. – Joe Jul 17 '17 at 21:42