Looking at the total costs

I recently cooked for my good friends birthday, and I wanted to review my cooking method for serving ten to twelve guests, with less than a hundred dollars worth of food. Not only can you cook a great meal for a lot of people for cheap, but you also can use ingredients that are thought to be more prestigious and expensive (AKA meat).

If you look at our society today, across the world, most people want a nice piece of meat or fish for their birthday or another special occasion. However, most people also cannot afford a nice roast tail of monkfish or a filet mignon, but this shouldn't mean people must forgo these categories in entirety. Most home cooks today in american cannot even tell you the difference between a filet and a short rib, let alone how each should be treated in cooking it.

My friend wanted a nice birthday dinner to share with friends. As he is Jewish, He doesn't eat pork or shellfish, but he said he loves beef, so I knew I had to do something with beef. While most are right when they say that beef is expensive, there are avenues to get around these expensive conventional routes. Moreover, when cooking at home, it is always crucial to not only look at the price of ingredients, but also look at the cost of time to you. If you want to spend five hours a day for a whole week preparing for a meal for ten, it may still cost under a hundred dollars, but the time spent on that meal for ten may actually be a bigger cost overall than the actual price. So while I could buy a cut of the shoulder or rump of the cow (both fairly inexpensive cuts), I would have to sacrifice much more time braising and working with the ingredients. Therefore, I bought a skirt steak. Skirt is a great cheap cut of steak; the fat marbling is good and the texture isn't too tough if cooked right. Once I narrowed down the cut of the steak, I knew how I was going to cook it, and what it could work with. I immediately jumped to build it yourself authentic tacos. I cut onions and limes, laid out toritillas on a board, and made my own rice, guac, and carne asada for people to assemble themselves. Working for twelve guests or more can seem daunting, but in reality, its just planing, picking, and choosing the right dishes and ingredients to serve your needs.