Me and a good mate have done a lot of smoking, roast spits, and cooking. We started a hire business and shop. We are just transitioning into catering and for our first ever catering gig we decided to cook for 150 people at a Latin dance group in the heart of Brisbane (at the old museum).
The first 5.5 hours was enjoyable, watching the meat cook, controlling the temp and general shenanigans, followed by 1 hour of intense serving. It is definitely a unique experience.
The group reached out with 1 week notice. They wanted 45 kg of meat cooked (15 kg wagyu, 15 kg of pork leg, deboned and rolled, and 15 kg of chicken breast)
We had already hired out our hooded 1500 spit and told them there was a 0% chance of getting that much meat on a 1200 spit. Instead we used it like an oven and cooked the meat in alfoil trays. We just salt and peppered the roasts and marinaded all the breast because cooking it straight on the grill above charcoal seemed really risky for drying it out. We just wanted to cook it in the marinade and shred it.
The end result was fantastic. The meats were all of even size (we made sure) so that it cooked about the same time. We pulled the pork of first, let it rest for 20 minutes before cutting. We never let the temperature drop below 60 ºC after it was taken off.
Some things to note:
1. the meat took much longer to cut than anticipated, give yourself at least 15 minutes for freshly rested roasts 5-7 kg in weight.
2. Cooking them in the alfoil trays allows you to cut the meat into the juice and absorb more moisture before putting on the serving trays
3. We should have put some cut onion and a small amount of water in the trays, and we could have cooked it in a natural gravy type juice.
4, The chicken breast took longer than expected under the charcoal hood in alfoil trays. We put 5 kg of chicken in each tray, with 500 mL of marinade in each one - 1.5 hours cooking minimum.
If anyone has any pointers, tips, ticks or information that would help us on our journey it would be much appreciated! There was a rush doing such a large cook. We followed all the legal requirements and felt comfortable doing it. We would love some feedback and anyhting that would help us on our future journey!
Here are some pictures of the event:
this image shows the meat before the cook, as it just went on. The charcoal is inside and the hood went down adn cooking started here.
Back up charcoal in a chimney. after 1.5 hours we started new charcoal and kept smoldering charcoal incase the temperature dipped.
This image is the meat almost fully cooked
This image shows the beef at 65 ºC. This temperature is perfect for a medium rare, but legally we had to get it to 71 ºC for food safety, so it took another 45 minutes from this point
Here is a link to our indepth breakdown of the experience and things we learnt along the way https://outdoorlivingaustralia.com.au/b ... q-catering