Coming up with a menu for a dinner party can get a little complicated. There are many things to consider, from availability of ingredients to your guests' numerous dietary restrictions. But it's also can be a lot of fun, like piecing together an intricate puzzle. Read on for nine basic things to keep in mind while creating your menu.
There's usually a starting point for your menu creation. Maybe you have a lovely leg of lamb you want to use, or your garden has just exploded with tomatoes, or you have a favorite recipe you're in the mood to make. If you're honoring someone, they might have a favorite ingredient or recipe you want to be sure to use. Or maybe there's a particular cuisine or country you want to feature. This decision is your anchor and from there you can begin to build you menu, taking the following into consideration:
• 1. Style: Is this a buffet or a sit down dinner? Indoors or outdoors? Casual or a little fancy? Several courses or all at once?
• 2. Timing: If at all possible, try to minimize as much last minute preparation as possible, as it can take you away from your guests and cause too much stress. This is where a roast chicken or a joint of meat can come in handy, as it needs to rest for several minutes before serving leaving time to focus on the sides. Lasagna is another good main dish as it is easy to prep in advance and is basically hands-off once it's in the oven.
• 3. Repetition: Try to avoid using the same or similar food in every course. It's easy to do this with cheese, for instance, or lemons. Conversely, you could do an ingredient-centric menu by highlighting a certain ingredient, showing the many ways it can be transformed in each course.
• 4. Color: Picture what your meal will look like on the plate and think about coloring. It's very easy to accidentally create an all-white meal, for example, such as chicken with mashed potatoes and cauliflower. A solution would be to swap out the cauliflower for broccoli (or add the broccoli to the cauliflower along with some slivered red pepper.) Or make mashed sweet potatoes instead of regular spuds.
• 5. Temperature: It's nice to vary this if possible. A salad course is a classic way to introduce a cool temperature. On a slighty different note, consider the time of year and avoid hot heavy meals in the summer or cool, light meals in the winter.
• 6. Balance: Don't overload the meal with too much of one flavor or texture. If you're serving a fatty cut of meat, try serving something acidic or sharp to balance out the plate. If your meal is spicy then be sure to have a cooling element, such as the classic raita with Indian food.
• 7. Familiarity: If you are planning for a dinner party, do yourself a favor and avoid recipes that you are unfamiliar with. Or, if you're a crackerjack cook and confident of your skills, at least try not to have everything be brand new to you. It's nice to rely on the tried and true for at least a few of the elements.
• 8. Cost: It's easy to go overboard when day dreaming about a menu. Unless you have unlimited funds, it's important to keep an eye on the expensive ingredients. If you do want to celebrate with something a little fancy, try limiting it to just one stellar ingredient, such as a little truffle or a gorgeous cut of meat and let it shine on its own.
• 9. Seasonality: Even if you're not a locavore, there are certain things that you want to avoid unless they're in season. Serving a salad that features raw tomatoes, such as a caprese salad, is best left until summer when tomatoes are at their best. Or take advantage of the brief fava bean season to usher in spring.
Other Considerations: The food allergies and limitations of your guests; holiday themes and traditions; space, both in your kitchen and in your dining room; dishes (do you have enough plates for a salad and a dessert course or will you have to wash them in between?)
What things do you consider when planning your menu? Any tricks or hints?
Related: Need Fresh Dinner Inspiration? Read a Restaurant Menu
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Planning a dinner party is fun yet challenging. I never invite people over who have food "issues". It may sound mean, but that's how I roll.
Here Here! If you have too many food issues, you're OUT!
Wow, people with "food issues" don't get invited? How narrow minded is that?
People really can't help what they like and don't like, and some people have stronger reactions to food flavors than others. I was brought up to eat pretty much everything, but my son mostly lives on macaroni and cheese. I know some people in my circle of friends are vegan, some vegetarian, some have allergies to some foods, etc. i try to make sure there are a couple of things everyone can eat. If nothing else, there is usually good homemade bread! frankly a bigger issue for me is having a potluck and someone showing up with a Marie Callendar's pie instead of homemade. Now there's a person with real "food issues"!
It's more about the friendship and people, and not about people's food likes and dislikes, isn't it?
cbreynolds and ladyepanda, I agree...I always serve a vegetarian option but that's as far as it goes. I cook from scratch and just don't have time to make 6 different nut-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, vegan, etc., etc. options, nor am I comfortable guaranteeing that there is no nut cross-contamination in my kitchen for someone with a deadly allergy, or that I've read labels carefully enough to suss out hidden gluten. If you'd like to come and bring your own food that's great, but at my Christmas party I invited a family that I did not even know was gluten-free, and all the did was stand around and complain about how there was nothing they could eat. I am planning another party in a few weeks, and they're off the guest list.
Different priorities, I guess. Personally, I prioritize friends over menus, but that's how I roll.
Maybe it's just me, but thinking back to 10+ years ago I don't think I knew anyone that was was gluten sensitive, lactose intolerant, had a citrus allergy, etc. Maybe I had one vegetarian friend. Now it seems like every other person you meet has some dietary restriction. It makes it very hard to cook for people.
I just glad that people now seem to be over this "I don't eat carbs" fad.
It's "hear, hear."
But that aside, I can relate to wanting to cook things the way you'd like to eat them and selfishly not compromising dishes for the benefit of others, but I make exceptions for food preferences and dietary restrictions on a per serving basis if it's possible, because I want to feed ALL of my friends and I want my guests to be happy but I also want to still serve certain dishes the way they're supposed to be served.
Bitchy today, aren't we?
I think not inviting someone because they are clueless about food (or too broke to get something nice) is a little mean, too. Not everyone is a "foodie".
haha, i try to group people i know together, ive been known to call someone up and say "hey, im cooking vegetarian/gluten free/vegan/whatever for someone, you might as well come over too"
Thanks for a good list of things to consider when creating menus! I will pass along to my 4 cooks at church, who prepare a weekly meal for around 200 guests. We publish the menu ahead, so if you can't eat what we're serving, bring your own and you can still participate in the fellowship.
I leave it up to guests to inform me in advance of any serious food issues. The only one I remember (and would happily plan a meal around) is my best friend's husband, who's allergic to nuts. But when we're having one or two people over for the first time, I do ask for allergies just in case.
I never let food allergies/dietary restrictions/strong preferences get in the way of cooking for my friends. There's a lot of recipes out there in the world. Whatever it is, you can make it work. (To be clear, I also see no reason why if I make something delicious that happens to fit someone's dietary restrictions everyone else shouldn't eat it too; I'm not a make two or more main dishes kind of host).
The thing that I always almost forget to ask is whether or not my dinner guests can do spicy foods, and it's usually those times when I forget or almost forget that I find out that I'm having over the kind of person who thinks that black pepper is too spicy.
I have "food issues" (sorry that my body can't tolerate gluten and peanuts, I promise you it's nothing personal against dinner party hosts), and all of the nasty comments about it here is the reason why I generally decline to go to dinner parties (other parties I just eat before I go, assuming that I won't be able to eat anything) and now I'm even shying away from going to holiday dinners at my in-laws (even though I ALWAYS tell them that I'll bring the dessert and bake any kind of gluten-free bread/rolls they want).
As for some of the insinuations here that people are making up their food allergies: the frequency of food allergies IS on the rise - the comments on this blog are just some of the evidence of that - yet it's funny how little you hear of research going on to find out WHY no one had nut allergies (except for me) back when I was a kid and now you're not even allowed to bring P&B sandwiches into some schools.
I wonder what has so dramatically changed in our food system to cause this? Surely, the HUGE prepared food industry couldn't have anything to do with the rise in allergies just as it couldn't possibly be keeping research dollars away from answering this question? No, of course not.
But I can assure you that no one with a food allergy is making it up. I wish I were...it'd make my life a lot easier (and I'd get to go to more dinner parties).
@ Lobita, you bring up a great point. I would love to see a post on that topic in thekitchn...
Funny food issue - my brother was recently diagonised with a gluten-intolerance. (for the last couple of years he thought maybe it was a lactos intolerance but it clearly was "more"). As a family, we still don't understand it fully. My mom made it a point to make an Easter Morning brunch all gluten free- checking labels and everything. She even bought gluten-free cream cheese. But then she forgot and bought bagels as the "bread" side. :-P