Just because you're the host, doesn't mean you have to take on all the work. Make ‘delegate’ the word of the day for your next dinner party and get your guests involved, with a make-your-own-dinner party.
Allowing your guests to pitch in and help with dinner sets a comfortable, casual tone to your dinner party. Most guests really, truly do want to help you get dinner on the table, so hand out the aprons and put your friends to work!
Here are some ideas for dinner parties that distribute the work among everyone at your dinner.
Gathering Around the Grill
Guys love to hang out around the grill. Don’t let them just stand there holding a beer can – give them a piece of meat and a grill fork and let them grill their own.
Serve a mixed grill and set out marinated beef, chicken, pork, and shrimp, and let everyone choose their own, and help tend the grill.
Have a build-your-own kebabs. Set out shish kebab sticks and cubes of beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, scallops, and chunks of green pepper, onion wedges and mushrooms, and tell your guests to mix and match whatever they like.
Build-Your-Own Dinners
Set out fixings for fajitas – warmed tortilla shells, cooked chicken and beef strips, sautéed mushrooms, onions and peppers, shredded Monterey jack cheese, chopped olives, black beans, rice, salsa, and snipped cilantro – and let your guests build their own dinners.
You can do the same with a salad bar. Set out lettuces, chopped meats, hard boiled eggs, chopped vegetables, chick peas, olives, cubed cheddar cheese, croûtons and a variety of dressings, and let your guests make their own main-dish salads. Include a couple of unusual items – tiny corn cobs, pineapple chunks, avocado, or pickled beets. Salad bars are a perfect opportunity to taste test something new.
Host a Cooking Lesson
If you have a dish that’s your specialty, something your guests look forward to being served at your place, and a recipe that you get lots of requests for, invite friends over and teach them how to make it. Take it one step further and have each guest bring ingredients for a side dish and teach the rest of you how to make something they’re known for, too.
Sustainable Table suggests an impromptu approach, by not determining the menu beforehand. Buy the ingredients you think you’ll need and when everyone arrives, bring them into the kitchen and decide together what the best dishes are that you can make with the ingredients you bought. Have some cookbooks on hand to thumb through for inspiration. And don’t be afraid to wander from the recipes to try something new!
Fondue Parties
Fondue parties have such a retro feel to them. Fondue is a Swiss tradition that was made popular in the United States in the mid 1960s and made a recent comeback.
Gathering guests around the fondue pot gives even the shyest guest something to talk about.
Classic fondue includes cheese for dipping cubes of crusty bread, hot oil or broth fondue for cooking pieces of meat and vegetables, and chocolate for dipping fruit for dessert.
According to GoFondue.com it’s a longstanding Swiss tradition that if a nugget of bread is lost in the cheese fondue pot by a man, he buys a bottle of wine. If a woman loses her bread in the pot, she kisses the man on her left!
The Food Network and Digs Magazine have some delicious ideas for fondue parties. Click here for recipes for cheese, beef and chocolate fondue.
Make-Your-Own Pizzas
Wimmeley LLC, a Greenville, S.C., company has come out with a tabletop pizza oven set up to cook six personal pizzas. The PizzaDome is a small version of an actual Italian style brick oven for pizzas, calzones, flatbreads, apple pie desserts, and other favorites.
The PizzaDome Web site suggests a pizza party in which guests assemble their own mini pizzas with pre-chopped toppings, gather around the tabletop oven, bake their pizzas and enjoy them right at the table. The site also has a recipe booklet and instruction manual that you can download or view online. download-able recipe booklet.
Allowing your guests to pitch in and help with dinner sets a comfortable, casual tone to your dinner party. Most guests really, truly do want to help you get dinner on the table, so hand out the aprons and put your friends to work!
Here are some ideas for dinner parties that distribute the work among everyone at your dinner.
Gathering Around the Grill
Guys love to hang out around the grill. Don’t let them just stand there holding a beer can – give them a piece of meat and a grill fork and let them grill their own.
Serve a mixed grill and set out marinated beef, chicken, pork, and shrimp, and let everyone choose their own, and help tend the grill.
Have a build-your-own kebabs. Set out shish kebab sticks and cubes of beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, scallops, and chunks of green pepper, onion wedges and mushrooms, and tell your guests to mix and match whatever they like.
Build-Your-Own Dinners
Set out fixings for fajitas – warmed tortilla shells, cooked chicken and beef strips, sautéed mushrooms, onions and peppers, shredded Monterey jack cheese, chopped olives, black beans, rice, salsa, and snipped cilantro – and let your guests build their own dinners.
You can do the same with a salad bar. Set out lettuces, chopped meats, hard boiled eggs, chopped vegetables, chick peas, olives, cubed cheddar cheese, croûtons and a variety of dressings, and let your guests make their own main-dish salads. Include a couple of unusual items – tiny corn cobs, pineapple chunks, avocado, or pickled beets. Salad bars are a perfect opportunity to taste test something new.
Host a Cooking Lesson
If you have a dish that’s your specialty, something your guests look forward to being served at your place, and a recipe that you get lots of requests for, invite friends over and teach them how to make it. Take it one step further and have each guest bring ingredients for a side dish and teach the rest of you how to make something they’re known for, too.
Sustainable Table suggests an impromptu approach, by not determining the menu beforehand. Buy the ingredients you think you’ll need and when everyone arrives, bring them into the kitchen and decide together what the best dishes are that you can make with the ingredients you bought. Have some cookbooks on hand to thumb through for inspiration. And don’t be afraid to wander from the recipes to try something new!
Fondue Parties
Fondue parties have such a retro feel to them. Fondue is a Swiss tradition that was made popular in the United States in the mid 1960s and made a recent comeback.
Gathering guests around the fondue pot gives even the shyest guest something to talk about.
Classic fondue includes cheese for dipping cubes of crusty bread, hot oil or broth fondue for cooking pieces of meat and vegetables, and chocolate for dipping fruit for dessert.
According to GoFondue.com it’s a longstanding Swiss tradition that if a nugget of bread is lost in the cheese fondue pot by a man, he buys a bottle of wine. If a woman loses her bread in the pot, she kisses the man on her left!
The Food Network and Digs Magazine have some delicious ideas for fondue parties. Click here for recipes for cheese, beef and chocolate fondue.
Make-Your-Own Pizzas
Wimmeley LLC, a Greenville, S.C., company has come out with a tabletop pizza oven set up to cook six personal pizzas. The PizzaDome is a small version of an actual Italian style brick oven for pizzas, calzones, flatbreads, apple pie desserts, and other favorites.
The PizzaDome Web site suggests a pizza party in which guests assemble their own mini pizzas with pre-chopped toppings, gather around the tabletop oven, bake their pizzas and enjoy them right at the table. The site also has a recipe booklet and instruction manual that you can download or view online. download-able recipe booklet.
