Big thank you to all who showed up for our July Cook and Serve Opportunities. I don’t know about yall, but I had a great time and although it was quite a bit of work, it was definitely worth it to see the impact it had on the people and families we served.
We had 10 volunteers, including Craig Compton who has been a great resource of encouragement in taking on this project. We cooked over 200 meals that was served to 140 guests inside the shelter, about 15 meals served to those on the street outside, plus the 6 staff members at the facility. We had enough chicken and rice left over to serve a good 40-50 more meals.
For the purpose of documentation in case anyone ever wants to recreate this meal at the same scale, here was our shopping list at Sams Club, which was taken care of by Crossings Community Church.
Chicken Curry Purchase List
I have adjusted this list to better reflect what we should have purchased, because we over shot some of the ingredients.
Chicken thighs 55 pounds (roughly) LINK
Curry powder (x1) LINK
Plain Greek yogurt (x4) LINK
Onions (x2) LINK
Garlic (x1) LINK
Ginger (x1) LINK
Turmeric (x1) LINK
Cumin (x1) LINK
Butter (x2) LINK
Tomato Sauce (x5) LINK
Rice ( cooked before event ) (x2) LINK
Salt (x1) LINK
Broccoli (x15) LINK
Cookies (x4) LINK
Chicken Pans (x1) LINK
Broccoli Pans (x1) LINK
For the rice, we did the oven bake method. 1:1.6 rice to water with a half stick of butter to pan we did 5 cups of rice and 8 cups of water with about 1 tablespoon of salt. Covered firmly with foil and baked at 375 for about 30 minutes.
For the chicken we prepared the sauce with sautéed onions in a stick of butter, tomato sauce, about a heaping serving spoon of the following: Garlic, Turmeric, Cumin, and Curry Powder and about a tablespoon of Ginger. Half of the yogurt container and once that sauce had heated to a nice consistency and passed the taste test, we poured it over the chicken thighs that had been quartered or diced. We baked that in the oven at 375 for 80 minutes.
We cook our broccoli in electric skillets with half a stick of butter and a couple cups of water, salt & pepper or garlic salt if we have it on hand. Two bags fit in a skillet and then we dump those into large steaming trays for transportation.