Expert: Teri Davis Newman - 7/10/2008

Question
My daughter is getting married the end of August. For the menu she has chosen chicken breasts in cream sauce, spaghetti and sauce - both meat and meatless, mashed potatoes, salad bar, and some type of bread.  The recipe says 3 pounds of chicken will feed 6-8 people. I bought 36 pounds of chicken to feed approximately 85 guests. My questions are: 1) Too much chicken?? 2)This sauce contains 1 cup of cream (20% butterfat).  Can I make this in advance, freeze the sauce and raw chicken together and then cook it off the day of the wedding without illness? Will the sauce be too runny if this is frozen? Should I freeze the two separately? I'm afraid if I cook the chicken in advance and put in the warming pots, the chicken will continue to cook and become dry.

Answer
Cook the sauce and the chicken separately and hold the sauce in a warming tray (steam table-chafing dish) and put it  on the chicken just before serving, and you can also do this with the spaghetti sauce and hold the pasta in hot water--or do baked spaghetti which should be much easier. You need 10 ounces of bone-in meat per serving but if you are only serving breast of chicken, then figure 1 per person. Under NO circumstances should you freeze sauce and raw chicken together--it's a recipe for disaster.  I don't know if the sauce can be frozen without seeing the recipe, so make a small batch and freeze it and then thaw it and see how it is.
Don't kill yourself with this--the food at a wedding is secondary to the liquor, cake and celebration. No one really expects great food at a wedding because it's so difficult to cook for huge crowds and have it be extraordinary--look at all the people who go to political fundraisers and pay a ton of money for rubber chicken!