Hosting a Cooking Party

Due to the many stresses of hosting dinner parties a new recent trend has begun to emerge, cooking parties.

What exactly is a cooking party? It’s a chance for you and your closest friends gather around the kitchen and cook a meal together.

The result is a lot of fun, laughter and great food. It’s a fabulous way to have a dinner party without the stress of cooking a variety of items all by yourself. It’s also a great idea if you know a lot of picky eaters, who are able to assemble their own meals!

Here are some great tips and ideas of hosting your Cooking Party…

• Have aprons or chef hats for your friends to wear.
• Decide on a menu and ask friends to bring certain ingredients or drinks.
• Decide whether you want to have “cooking stations” where everyone is cooking a particular item (ex: someone’s making a salad, someone is making dessert…etc) or whether you’ll all be doing the exact same thing (ex: everyone creates their own burrito). *I recommend that guests create the same thing during your first cooking party to minimize stress, while giving the hostess a chance to see what ingredients guest like or don’t like.
• If everyone is cooking the same thing, make sure everyone has enough cooking tools, cutting board and utensils to use.
• Prepare appetizers before hand, so you and your guests have something to snack on while you cook.
• Make the party fun by having little challenges, “First person to drop something on the floor”, “Best creation”, “Best dressed in the kitchen”, “Messiest Chef”…etc. Be sure to provide prizes to add excitement!

Menu Ideas:

• Create your own pizza
• Create your own Burrito
• Create your own Panini

Tip:Thinking of foods that you all can make in your own work space. Assembling an entree is much easier than all trying to gather around the stove. Small bowls with different toppings works much better when assembling a pizza, a burrito or panini!

Tags: cooking party, cooking with friends, dinner party, dinner party ideas, dinner party tips, fun food, hosting

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Dinner recipes, Party themes, Uncategorized, dinner ideas, dinner parties, dinner party menu, fun foods, hosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.