Need suggestions for after funeral gathering.

[NoisyCricket]

My father passed away Friday, and my family is making all the food for the gathering after the funeral. The funeral is on Tues. I have 18 Marens roos in the freezer, ranging mostly 14-18 weeks old, with three that were 1 1/2yrs old. I would like to use one or two of them to make a couple of dishes for the gathering, but I have no idea what to make.

I have never cooked a home grown bird before, and I am not an experienced cook. I have a couple of crock pots, and a pressure cooker at my disposal. I am looking for an easy recipe, or two, nothing too fancy. Also, with effort, I can get them thawed in time, but is it possible to cook them frozen, or partially thawed?

My brother's girlfriend is a great cook and is making the bulk of the food (lasanga; meatballs, sausage & pasta; American chop suey), and we are having sandwich platters, pasta salads etc.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

 

[rrrmamma]

Miy sympathy to you and your family. About how many people are you expecting? I can come up with some simple ideas for you. I have catered and cooked for large groups for years. It sounds like you are having several pasta dishes so you probably don't want chicken and dumplings or noodles. How much do the birds weigh? I am thinking a simple bbq sauce or maybe a mushroom sauce. If you can cut them up and use large aluminum foil pans they can be done in the oven ahead of time and reheated at the time. Let me know if I can help with more specific ideas,
Deb

 

[NoisyCricket]

Thank you.
The problem is that we really have not sure how many to expect. Maybe ~75?? I am not sure the weight on the birds. My older birds were about 12 pounds live weight, but the younger ones were less. I can use however many a recipe calls for though.
I thought that with the duel purpose birds, they had to be cooked with moist methods, that is why I was thinking crock pot? My family is big into starchy food so more pasta is never a problem. The bbq sounds good, if I can get them thawed. Do I just cut them up, put them in the pan, pour the sauce over and cook?

 

[Oregon Blues]

My sincere condolences about your father.

Put the chickens into the crockpot and cook until they are falling apart. Then take them out and remove all the bones. Once you have just meat, you have many options. You can just pour a bottle of barbecue sauce over the meat and serve the meat on small home made biscuits for barbecue chicken sliders.

If the weather is going to be cold, you can make chicken noodle soup out of it.

The meat can be chilled and chopped and made into chicken salad and served on crackers. That would be easy, Make it like tuna salad. chopped chicken, mayonnaise, chopped pickle, maybe some thinly sliced green onion. Sliced black olives would be good in it, too.

I would use the meat to make enchiladas.

Cook for a lot of people. Leftovers, if there are any, can be frozen and eaten later.

 

[NoisyCricket]

That you very much for the ideas. I think I will go with the BBQ sliders. I think that should be easy enough.

 

[Morrow1411]

Cook the chicken until if falls off the bone. Cut it into small to med. size chunks and add it to a pot of yellow rice. This is a simple and quick way to feed a lot of people, and it cost very little.

I lost my father in April of this year. I am so sorry for your loss.