Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen Christmas and New Year is coming soon and many of you are
going to be cooking hosting dinner parties for a lot of people which is fun but it could also
be stressful stress out no more because today I'm going to share with you the tricks that I've
learned from working with professional caterers and doing catering of my own so that you can cook
an impressive meal and still enjoy the party for my own dinner parties I like to use these planning
templates because they help me stay organized save me a lot of time and spare me a lot of mistakes so
I'll talk about how I use these and if you like them you're more than welcome to download them
from my website so you can try them out there are two things that are absolutely key when it
comes to cooking for a large group and that is one spreading out the workload and two planning
of the details which is actually quite easy to do using this template so say a party is on Saturday
I'm going to give you a five-day countdown plan of action starting from Tuesday and you see how
much easier everything seems when you plan ahead at a minimum of four days before your party you
want to plan out what you're going to cook and write it down many people underestimate the power
of writing down the menu on a piece of paper it actually gives you a chance to look at everything
with a bird's eye view and see if all the dishes balance each other well for example this here is
the first draft of mine menu so I thought about okay what do I want to cook here are some of the
things I think would be good and now I see that I have two stewey things on the menu I don't want
that so I'm gonna get rid of my muscleman curry and I'm going to do shrimp cakes instead and then
I real cat and then I realize now I no longer have any poultry on the menu which is you know
something you want to have but now I have two red meats so I going to get rid of mine um top beef
and then do pies famous fried chicken instead and now I'm looking okay it looks good have some seats
with some chicken some beef everything looks well-balanced I'm happy with the menu now once
you've got what you think is your final menu put it away don't look at it until tomorrow so now
that you've had a chance to sleep on your menu you want to look at it again the next day with a fresh
eye and see if it's still something that you think is a good idea because often times you'll catch
something now that you didn't before or you will have come up with a better idea between then and
now now once you've decided on a final menu we're going to write a shopping list now this is where
my template comes in really handy I first list out all the dishes across the top and then for
each dish I list all the ingredients even if it's a repeat from another dish write it any way if you
need to buy a specific amount of something don't forget to include that here as well if you're
working from a recipe you can just copy down the ingredient list off of the recipe but if you're
freestyling like I often do this step actually helps you think about and streamline what you're
going to do in your head and help you mentally prepare for it this may seem tedious but trust me
it eliminates a chance of you forgetting anything and then if you created this list on the computer
you can print it out and you're gonna take this and check your pantry and cross off anything that
you already have and cross off anything that's a repeat from another dish and now you have your
complete shopping list and you can just take this to the store you want to do your shopping
two days before your party not the day before and definitely not the day off because you want to
be able to focus on those days just on prepping and cooking and not running around town looking
for ingredients and it's also going to give you enough time to come up with a plan B in case it
turns out that something you need isn't available the only exception to that is highly perishable
things such as fresh seafood which you want to get the morning of the party if possible you
so the party is tomorrow you just spend today doing everything that can be done the day before
now this is where the second template that I have called the prep schedule comes in really really
handy but first let's talk about what kinds of things can be done the day before you can cut
and marinate your protein you can also cut most of your vegetables today if multiple vegetables
go in the same dish you can put them in the same container like a little kit and if they don't
go in at the same time you can separate them using parchment or saran wrap you can make all
your sauces and dressings and finally you can make an entire dish and be done with it a day
ahead of time such as braced and stewed dishes casseroles and they'll even taste better the
next day and here's how you can use the prep schedule to help you plan out your prep so on
the prep schedule you put all the dishes down on one side on the first column and on this column
day before you're gonna put down the tasks that can be done ahead of time for that dish and on
this column for day of you're going to put down whatever tasks are left to do once you've done
that you're going to fill in this little column labeled P which stands for priority this is where
you mark what needs to be done first or towards the end for example making a stew takes hours
so that's going to be your first priority so I'm gonna mark that with a1 this is also going
to take a while so I'm gonna do that second I mark that with a2 soaking the rice I want
to do that in the evening because I don't want it soaking for too long so I'm gonna mark that
with p.m. and then everything else that doesn't have a mark I'll do that anytime in between and
as you're doing your prep you just have this with you and cross things off as you're done
this right here is going to save you so much time and stress because you no longer have to
think about what you need to do next you're just tackling the list one thing at a time
and the party is today and since you've done such a good job with your advanced prep today you just
focus on the food quality presentation getting things out on schedule and being a wonderful
non stressed-out host you should have your priorities figured out for all your tasks
before you start executing and it's a little bit trickier today because things are time sensitive
so it helps me to think about things in two directions what needs to be done and what can
be done from the first minute going forward and then what needs to be done from the last minute
back up here's what I mean on our prep schedule let's first think going forward what needs to
be done and what can be done first for example I want to prep the fish first for steaming and
just leave it in the fridge so that I don't have to worry about it again until it's time
to cook and then cooking the mushrooms for the salad they don't need to be served hot so I can
do that second and get it out of the way after you get your first priorities out of the way
you want to flip your thinking around and start marking things that need to be done as close to
serving time as possible for example our fish needs to be served as soon as it's done and it
needs ten minutes to cook so I'm going to start cooking that 15 minutes to go time - 15 so I give
myself a little 5-minute margin for plating and other things that might come up I also have a
bunch of stuff labeled as D for delegate which brings me to an important point get somebody to
help you if at all possible don't try to do it all on your own and don't wait for somebody to
offer themselves either ask your friends or your family member if they want to be the official
sous chef of the night it is of tremendous value when you've got somebody around who
can help you with little things like can you please toss the salad can you put this on the
table can you answer my texts because my hands are dirty it frees you up so you can now focus
on the things that really need your attention and your skills and most of the time people love
being the sous chef they even feel special that you asked and that's it that's my dinner party
planning system now you're more than welcome to download these templates which I personally you
or you can just take the idea and create something that works for you but the takeaway message is
this investing a little time in planning and spreading out the workload throughout the week
will eliminate all that dinner-parties stresses you might have now I hope you found this helpful
if you enjoy the show please click to subscribe and I wish you a wonderful stress-free party