Help please – large cooking pots

Well seeing as STW is never stumped no matter how obscure the question I am sure you can help me with this. A pal is having a DIY / austerity wedding and I am going to be responsible for cooking a game stew for 50 people. The only issue is where can we get big pots from and how big will I need? I have two roe deer and 12 pheasants for the stew ( that I am gong to have to butcher!)

Pots preferably for hire and around Edinburgh / Fife / Perth

Stew for 50 people … hhmm … considering how much meat you lot eat and with stew meat melting away … Two of this at this size should do I guess. (edit: maybe one will be enough …)

You might be able to hire from Asian wedding caterer …

I’ve two fairly big pots at home 12″ and 14″ diameter 7″ high and I have access to bigger one at work. Don’t know how many to cook for 50 people.

Some info here …

Cooking for 50 and here.

Sounds like you need a Bratt Pan. Not sure how much they cost to rent.

Is there a weight limit for normal cooker tops? I’d be bothered about it on a ceramic top.

Bikepawl – I’m thinking we need bigger than that – sort of school dinner size pots – if you have bigger at work that could be very helpful.

jimdubleyou

WTF is a Bratt pan? seen them on the catering hire sites but dunno what they are

Ebay

There are 2 of these…. 34cm probably 20 litres or so each, should do 50?

Otherwise you want some catering size pots from somewhere like nisbets.

Or you can have three to four 25 litre cooking pot.

This one is 65 litre. (one of this)

Or two of this. This one is about 34 litre.

The one at work is school dinner size, roughly the size of the 34l pot in chewies post. I can give you exact dimensions on Tuesday. I posted pictures of the two at home on my Flickr page.

BikePawl – Member
The one at work is school dinner size, roughly the size of the 34l pot in chewies post. I can give you exact dimensions on Tuesday. I posted pictures of the two at home on my Flickr page.

You are also better off with using two 34L pots to leave room for the slow boiling. 🙂

That would be spot on bikepawl ta muchly.

I’d be using 4 or 5 smaller pots and cooking them in batches. Far safer that way incase you make a complete arse of it and ruin one big batch. Can’t be easy scaling up to 50 portions unless you have previous experience of it.

That would be spot on bikepawl ta muchly.

I am thinking 20lbs or so of meat = 25 litres of stew = generous portions for 50 people = need 36l pot at least

I am going to check out the meat tomorrow – two roe deer and 12 pheasants. Its been butchered into large bits I believe – just going to need trimming and dicing

Are you mates with folks involved in scouts or guides? There will be lots of big cooking pots lurking in scout huts and activity centres in the camp stores.

Good call – we have scouts coming to set up marquees for us for a contribution to funds. I’ll check with the chap who is organising it all

Friendly with any pub landlords?

I was given a huge pot years ago by a landlord of a pub as they had surplus.

jimdubleyou

WTF is a Bratt pan? seen them on the catering hire sites but dunno what they are

It’s basically a big, powered, casserole dish.

You can brown all the meat in it to start, then add the rest of the ingredients the same as you would in a normal pan.

They are usually 60-80 litre capacity

Or any military contacts who can speak to the mess? Field kitchens also use huge pots.

What are you going to be cooking on?

(the correct answer is a big fire) 🙂

Rent or buy? If the latter you could get something from nisbets

https://www.nisbets.co.uk/kitchenware-and-knives/cookware/pots-and-pans/boiling-and-stock-pots/_/a33-4?q=:p_diameter:400.0%3Cp_diameter%3C9999999.0&sort=match-rate-desc

But have you got a cooker big enough to actually get it boiling and up to temperature?

Otherwise might need smaller pots