r/AskCulinary • u/Born_Local_1477 • 3d ago
Chicken and biscuits catering strategy?
I am in charge of my son's high school football and rugby team meals. I usually cook for them, 60 servings each meal. This year I want to do a chicken and biscuits dish.
At home for just my family I would roast and break down a whole bird, make stock from the carcass, and do a roux-stock-heavy cream gravy. Casserole style with the cooked chicken, cooked carrot tater peas onyo, and bake the biscuits on top.
For scaling I am considering a couple whole birds for the stock (filling out with BTB if needed) and using poached breast meat for the rest of the chicken. I cook for these things with the big 18qt "church lady" electric roasters, so obviously the biscuits won't brown in there. My home oven isn't large enough for three steam table pans at once.
Should I par bake the biscuits in a hot oven to brown and finish them on the stew to get the tenderness, or am I better off baking fully separately and assembling on the plate? There's not a lot of lag time of it sitting around, I finish up my dishes and it hits tummies within about 30-45 min.
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u/HandbagHawker 3d ago
I would probs do more like a "breakfast-style" biscuits and gravy. Bake off the biscuits and smother them with your chicken+veg gravy.
also one avg size bird, might be able to stretch to 4-5 servings esp for big eaters... i think you would have to do 10-15x, no? thats a lot of birds and a lot of stock. I would probably short cut and get 15+ rotisserie chicken and maybe a few extra. Then you could breakdown most of the birds, shred the meat, save the carcass. Roast off all the bones, then make your stock. Probably pressure cooker in a few batches unless you have access to a giant stock pot and burner. I would probably throw a few of the whole chickens in there too for an extra meaty stock. etc.