Monday, November 12, 2012

Cooking for a group

  No sewing last week because Stan and I did the lunches Friday and Saturday for the church Holiday Boutique. We made meatloaf for 96.
We make the food in our home kitchen so we do it in small batches. We do it assembly line style and it goes real fast.
we have the butcher package the ground beef in 6 pound portions

Recipe meatloaf for 24

6 lbs ground beef
6 eggs lightly beatened
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
3/4 cup chopped bell pepper
1 TB dried minced garlic
1 TB salt
1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 TB dry yellow mustard
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup catsup
3 cups oatmeal
4 1/2 TB horseradish


Mix the eggs with the meat (use your hands)


then add everything else and mix together with you hands.


If baking later, put each batch in a
2 1/2 gallon food storage bag and refrigerate until cooking time. Can be made 2 days ahead of time.





To cook: Divide mixture in half. Shape each half into a loaf and place on a foil covered RIMMED cookie sheet. Spread 3/4 cup barbecue sauce on each loaf. bake in a 390F oven for 1 hour or until internal temperature is 170F. When cooking for a group we always check internal temperature.
Made four batches of meatloaf in 1 hour total. Including cleaning up the kitchen.

Serving crew at the church

Stan also made a vegetarian version. He boiled one pound of lentils; after cooking and cooling he ground them up  in the food processor and used them in place of the beef in the recipe - THE RECIPE WAS REDUCED TO 1/3 QUANTITY OF ALL INGREDIENTS.
No vegetarians this time, so we brought it home; it tasted pretty good!