Meal ideas for dinner parties are bountiful with options from all around the world to cook to impress your dinner guests whose tastes, preferences, and dietary restrictions may vary. Are they vegan, vegetarian, or gluten-free for example?
Fantastic Meal Ideas
Before starting any food preparations you may also want to consider how many guests there will be and how much time, labour, and expense you want to spend on cooking. With that in mind, here are some delicious and not too taxing meal ideas for dinner parties.
Lasagna
A popular dish in diets worldwide, lasagna is easy to cook, can be made vegan, and can fill up a crowd of friends. The main ingredients are ground beef, pasta sheets, marinara sauce, ricotta, and cheese. Selecting good quality meat is crucial and organic beef mince is often viewed as tasting the best. The choice of cheese and herbs is also important, you should go with grated parmesan, mozzarella, and oregano.
Lasagna isn’t too time-consuming to make and mostly involves chopping garlic, preparing the sauce, making sheets of pasta, and grating cheese. If you are pushed for time, you can cheat a little and pick up premade pasta sheets and jarred sauces at the store.
Sunday Roast Dinner
Traditionally from the United Kingdom, a Sunday roast dinner consists of oven-cooked meat, typically beef, chicken, or lamb accompanied by roasted potatoes and vegetables, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, Yorkshire puddings, and gravy.
Although preparing a Sunday roast requires a lot of prep, it is well worth all the peeling and chopping. Roasts are a sure way of getting a good fill.
Chicken Tikka Masala
This classic Indian curry consists of tender spiced chicken in a rich and creamy tangy sauce. Chicken tikka masala is a common choice for those unfamiliar with Indian food, and guests wary of spicy food will enjoy this introduction.
To get the most flavour, it is vital to marinate boneless chicken breasts in turmeric, garam masala, lemon juice, black pepper, ginger, and full-fat yoghurt. Masala sauce is a tomato and cream base seasoned with chilli, garlic, garam masala, ginger, and fenugreek.
Falafel Salad and Tahini
An Eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern staple, falafel’s popularity is also growing throughout the world due to the fact that almost everyone can eat it. A usual sauce accompanying falafel is tahini.
What you’ll need to make falafel are chickpeas, here you can choose to soak dried chickpeas or buy them in a can. Using dried chickpeas gives the best results as they hold less moisture. The chickpeas are then ground up in a food processor and seasoned with garlic, onions, lemon juice, and cumin.
Tahini sauce is a smooth paste made from ground roasted sesame seeds which can taste bitter if you have over roasted the sesame seeds or didn’t add enough seasoning. Garlic is essential to bring out the nutty sesame flavours.
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Italian food is incredibly popular, especially the huge variety of pasta dishes, and it can sometimes be hard to find all the speciality ingredients. Spaghetti and meatballs is a people’s favourite though as it requires only a few ingredients, a small amount of preparation, and a short cooking time of less than 1 hour.
Even though spaghetti and meatballs only have a couple of key ingredients, namely beef, and pasta, it is important to add seasonings in ample amounts to make it really delicious. These include garlic, pepper flakes, onion, black pepper, parsley, oregano, and basil.
Chicken Cordon Bleu
This is a well-loved time-old classic, and you don’t need to be a trained chef to make it for a dinner party. To make a chicken cordon bleu you first need to pound a chicken breast until it’s thin, then layer on ham and cheese before rolling it into a log.
Next, you should chill the chicken, once cooler coat the breast in flour then egg and finally dip it in breadcrumbs before frying. In an organized kitchen, you can quite easily make enough for a large group.
Asian Style Hot Pot
Originating in China, variations of hot pots are now common in almost every Asian country including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Hot pots can either be meat or seafood and come in different levels of spice which can be tailored to guests’ palate.
Dinner parties can be great fun and a relaxing way to catch up with old friends or connect with new acquaintances. Deciding what to cook can be a worry though, especially if you lack time to prepare or your guests are fussy eaters. This is why carefully selecting delicious yet simple to make dishes is important.