How to cater halal buffet food at a children's party?

[Feedingmybaby]

It’s DDs birthday party soon and just starting to think about catering. We are holding the party in a hall and will do typical buffet food for both adults and kids.

We’ce invited the whole class, and lots of children are Muslim and will only eat halal - I’ve never catered for this dietary requirement before.

Can anyone give any suggestions? There will be some cheese and jam sandwiches for the kids, but I was also planning on doing ham. Would the products containing pork need to be kept separately to everything else if the Muslim children are to eat them? I just don’t want the parents to not eat the food if I’m to do it ‘wrong’!

Turkey ham? Thats what’s often used on takeaway pizzas etc.

You’re thinking of Jehovah’s Witnesses. They don’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas.

Muslims don’t eat ham. Dont do ham. Do something else like sliced chicken or turkey and just buy ones marked halal safe. If you serve pork they probably won’t trust the food.

But kids love a ham sandwich and a sausage roll at a party!

They love ice cream and pizza too. It's really not that difficult to avoid meat.

It’s not the same thing. Halal means not stunned AND not killed in the name of any other God.

Muslim kids don’t. And there are vegetarian sausage rolls in shops

At my son's school events for parents there's usually volunteer parents serving drinks etc including Muslim women and they don't seem to have a problem pouring wine for other people. They just don't drink it themselves.

When I have done parties I've kept all the food halal just for simplicity. But I also think having the halal options separate to the non halal is perfectly fine if you want to serve ham sandwiches. Easy options are:
Turkey ham sandwiches
Halal chicken nuggets
Margarita pizza
Anything vegetarian including all the cheesy things and crisps kids like

It helps that a lot of traditional children's party food options are either vegetarian or the kind of thing that halal caterers produce a lot of already. So it's easy to buy all halal and barely notice a difference. The only thing to be aware of is, as others have said, sweets with geletine. But usually the parents and kids are quite aware. If they aren't sure they might ask to check the packaging

I think Jewish rules are stricter on contamination than Muslim eating rules. Usually a good rule of thumb is if it's kosher it's also Halal but if it's Halal it's not necessarily kosher. So I wouldn't be as stressed about everything being separated for that reason, although would separate things just because it avoids confusion/pointing out the halal/non halal plates to everyone individually/stuff getting muddled

What does the DD like to eat? It's her party. Make sure she's going to have things she likes.

To be honest at most kids parties I went to all that was eaten was crisps, strawberries and bread sticks 😂
Sandwiches/sausage rolls were ignored.

I would not necessarily cater solely halal food. Many meat eat eaters who are not Muslim will not eat halal meat.

We always just do vegetarian food for this reason

Do veggie and then you cant go wrong.

Loving the post on the first page - ham is carcinogenic!!!

and cheese sandwiches and jam sandwiches and pizza and crisps and sweets and cakes and carrots and cucumbers and hummus and fruit....

the problem is, this is MN where people don't always seem to like their friends, celebrations are seen as onerous so the guests wished should be paramount and make an effort for people is frowned upon

And apparently we have already heard Muslims dont like birthdays!!! lol

Ive never met a Muslim who didnt celebrate family birthdays. In a big way usually, tons of food.

I personally wouldn't serve pork if you have lots of Muslims attending. Id be worried about food getting mixed together or cross contamination. Id just do vegetarian foods for everyone.

I'd swap the ham for thin chicken slices

We just do veggie food if we do a birthday party, we buy those cardboard food boxes (like you get a happy meal in etc), and we make and label them for each child rather than having an open buffet.

The issue stated in the opening post is halal meat. That refers to the way the creature is killed, not what species the animal is or how thin the slices are.

Though for reasons that I can’t remember, not all eggs are halal.

Yeah I know. Pork ain't ever going to be halal is it!

I think normal run of the mill eggs are Halal.

Tuna sweetcorn sandwiches can be eaten and tuna cucumber. In a lot of supermarkets, you can get halal pepperoni- I would get that and put it on some margarita pizzas - Then you’ve got two types of pizzas.

We do vegetarian kids party food for this reason. They don't seem to care which variety of beige party food is served as long as there is cake.