Charcoal Series: How to Have a Grill Party 102

How big can a BBQ party get? A study by someone with over 20 kilos of charcoal sitting around the house and is catching flake for it.

I’d talked before about how to get started with smoking and grilling meats. A couple of years into this hobby, I thought it’ll be nice to talk a little more about hosting. More specifically, how large of a gathering can you host, and what you would have to do differently as crowd size increases?

Catering for a larger crowd isn't just about the quantity of ingredients needed. The limiting factor would be the grill’s throughput - the rate of cooking - and that is what you should think about more. A grilled pizza, for example, takes about 5-10 minutes to be done. If there are a dozen hungry people waiting on you, that’s about a mouthful of grilled pizza every 5 - 10 minutes. It doesn’t matter you prepped enough ingredients for a hundred pizzas – people are hungry now, and they are not going to wait until 10pm for you to finish cooking. Even if you had started the BBQ a hour earlier and finished a full grill’s worth of chicken thighs just before the guests arrive (about 2 kilos’ worth, or about 8-9 Maryland cuts), that’s still about a bit over a drumstick for each guest. Thinking that you can grill for twice as many people by buying twice as many ingredients is going to be disastrous – the throughput of the grill remains unchanged, and that is the choke point.

It doesn’t mean that you have to cap your gatherings to a handful of people. The throughput of a grill is limited by its size, but we can increase the throughput of the gathering by setting up other heat sources. And perhaps just as importantly, many guests want to participate in the process of cooking. Some of my favourite things to do during a barbecue would be to have a concurrent hotpot, for guests to cook bowls of soup to compliment the grilled flavours of the barbecue. Or double down on the barbecue by bringing out an induction stove for guests to sear some steaks or make smashed burgers. 

Here is a rough crowd size guide, along with sample menus on what is going to be realistic for a Weber grill.

 

Party Size	Sample Menu	Flow and Outcome
½ dozen (<6 pax)	~2kg smoked chicken thighs (1 full load on the grill) 4 grilled pizzas Salad (No need to cook) Drinks	4-5pm: Setting up the grill, lighting the charcoal 5-6pm: Smoking the chicken 6-645pm: Grilling 4 pizzas as guest start to arrive   Additional Help: Welcomed but not essential. Outcome: Dine together with guests.
7-9 pax	~2kg smoked chicken thighs (1 full load on the grill) 4 grilled pizzas Salad and drinks    + 2kg steaks + 1-2kg mushrooms	As above. Additional Help: A separate heat source is preferable if you want to dine with your guests. For example, as you are cooking the pizza, you can use an induction stove alongside the grill to sear the steaks or an oven to roast mushrooms. Outcome: Possible to dine together with guests with a separate heat source. Expect delays if you have to top up your charcoal to continue cooking.
Double-digit (10 pax or more)	You may double the amount of ingredients for grilling (pizza, steaks), but that's about it. Anything beyond doubling is unfeasible. You will be grilling for longer, since the throughput of the grill has not increased, and there’s only so long people will wait. If you can, use the Snake Method to smoke large chunks of meat (up to 8kg) from first thing in the morning to frontload the amount of cooked food available to people at the party, before smoking chicken thighs. Additional Help: A kitchen to cook the large amounts of food required. In lieu of a full kitchen, you can set up a hotpot and have your guests cook alongside you, which still seems in-keeping with the spirit of the gathering. Potlucks are also possible.  Outcome: In any case, you expect yourself to tending to the grill throughout dinner. Expect significant delays when your charcoal burns low and you need to add more charcoal.