Cooking Rice for 150?

by Natalie
(Brighton)

We have decided to cook our own curry before our wedding. We’re serving rice with it, but we are just not sure how to successfully cook rice for 150 people. I guess it could be tricky. Any clever ideas welcome.

Answer:

The great thing about rice is that you can cook it in advance and then warm it up before serving, but you’ve got to be careful as rice is prone to a nasty little bacteria, which can give food poisoning if not prepared in the correct way.

If you leave the cooked rice at room temperate for long periods (i.e. more than 1.5 hours), this bacteria will thrive and produce poisons. These can not then be destroyed by cooking – and the last thing you want is sick guests!

So, I’ve had a bit a rummage around on the web and found a couple of local government websites that actually give you advice on cooking rice safely.

• First all, to prevent food poisoning, NEVER store cooked rice at room temperature. Either keep it hot (at 63 degrees centigrade or above) or keep it cold (at 8 degrees centigrade or less).
• When the rice is cooked, cool it quickly for storage. It should be in the refrigerator within 1.5 hours of cooking. You can cool the rice by putting it in clean containers or in large sieves and running cold water through it.
• Once cold, cover it with cling film, or a plastic or metal lid and place it in the fridge.
• To reheat, take out the rice as needed and reheat. You’ll need to reheat it to at least 75 degrees centigrade for at least 2 minutes – it must be piping hot throughout. Reheat it only once.

So, for your wedding, you could prepare the rice the night before in batches. Get it cold quickly by running it under cold water and then store overnight in the fridge. On the day of the wedding, heat it up as per the instructions above. Again, you can do this in batches in a microwave and keep it warm in a ‘bain marie’ which will maintain it the correct temperature. You can hire these from catering hire stores.

For quantities, I would follow the instructions on the packet or use slightly less if you’re serving breads with the curry as well.

For my wedding, we hired extra fridges as it was mid-summer and very warm. We wanted to ensure we had plenty of cold space as we didn’t want to be known as the wedding where everyone got sick!!! For storage, we picked up a load of big plastic containers with lids from a pound shop and we stacked them in the fridge.

I hope that helps!






Reference: London Borough of Bexley, Food Safety