how do you estimate how much food to make for a party?

do you have a rule of thumb for estimating food? i am having a party of 57 people and dont want to be short food.

Re: how do you estimate how much food to make for a party?

For meat, I usually do 1.5 times the amount of people. For example, if I have 20 people coming, I'll get 30 burgers.

For other dishes, I look at how many the recipe feeds (or find a similar recipe if I'm using my own made-up sort of recipe) and just use that as a guide.

Re: how do you estimate how much food to make for a party?

It depends what I'm making and if I'm serving or if I am doing a 'buffet' type thing.

With serve your self/buffet:

If it's burgers and dogs I do 1.5 to 2 per person depending on the people I have coming. Before I start grilling I actually ask people what they want so I don't have a ton of cooked burgers and hot dogs leftover. I don't mind leftovers, but I'd prefer burgers and dogs to be saved UNCOOKED.

For sliced steak and such I figure .5 lbs per person.

Chicken, ribs, lamb chops and meatballs are 2 per person.. sometimes 3 with the lamb because my regular crowd is wild about them.

Salads go half tray for 10-15 people. I will suck it up and go full tray over 15.

I do a lot of skewers for veg and figure 2 skewers per person.

For dips I'll do 1 big serving of each.. if you miss it .. oh well!