People find the concept of large gatherings daunting –fourteen for Christmas dinner, twenty for a garden party, or five hundred for a barbecue. I’ve learnt that it isn’t daunting at all as long as you have enough fridge space, big enough bowls and can do some simple maths.
01 Practise on a smaller scale. My menu for the five hundred was chicken skewers with gochujang aioli, charred spring onions and a sesame bun. So I made it a few times on a small scale to get to know my quantities.
02 Weigh your dinner. You’ll see that you need 100g of chicken thigh per person, 1 tablespoon marinade per person, 15g aioli per person, 2 spring onions per person and 1 little sesame bun per person. Then simply scale up for your number of guests; for this you need some maths.
03 If you really do need to feed five hundred, be assured that this amount of food, combined with two people, disposable plates and cutlery and a bunch of flowers will only just fit in a standard size VW golf with all the seats down.
04 Figure out what you are going to keep everything in. I would advise a large range of different-sized plastic tubs that fit easily in your fridge. You may have to borrow someone else’s fridge space too.
05 You need a big barbecue, ideally one that can be alight on one side and can have charcoal added to the other side to push along, creating a conveyor belt of fire surface, keeping it constantly hot and burning.
06 Like any other event, be organized. Set up a system that works and then keep doing it, over and over until everyone is fed!
07 I grilled the chicken and onions and kept them warm in trays while Lou assembled buns and aioli, topping with chicken, onions and herbs as they were ordered. We fed five hundred people over a day and a night, barely looking up from the barbecue. It was intense!
08 Make sure you eat too, and get plenty of water. When it is all over drink a lot of wine!
