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’!

Just do cheese & tomato pizza & crisps.

I don’t think all kosher food is halal - kosher meat isn’t halal anyway. Just before anyone thinks this is a solution. It’s almost certainly easier to get halal options anyway - kosher meat is only sold in specific stores or maybe packaged stuff in the kosher section. Insanely expensive too!

For this and other reasons my family was almost entirely vegetarian growing up. My birthday parties were all vegetarian in the 80\ so I’m sure the children now would cope!

Pizza is universal. Everyone likes pizza (caveat around Parmesan cheese!)

Just do meat and vegetarian and cater like you would normally, one meat platter and one veg. It’s their dietary requirements so up to their parents to manage.

I would not be buying any halal produce.

Can't go wrong with this. With party rings.

It’s not but I don’t want to completely avoid meat. I have family members coming too and would like to do a platter of cured meats for them.

Just keep it separate from the other food if you want to serve pork .

Surely it would be easier though (just doing vegetarian).
I am sure your relatives will survive without a meat platter for one afternoon.
Why make more work for yourself?

Because I enjoy hosting and don’t see it as hard work!

would the platter of cured meats need to be kept on a separate table or is just a separate board ok?

It's up to you then.
Table or platter...it doesn't really matter.
Anyone with meat restrictions in their diet will probably not go near the meat and choose other food instead.

So personally I'd say another table altogether if you really can't go without meat for an afternoon as the kids will grab whatever and then grab whatever else and everything would be covered in meat hands. But I'm thinking of it from a kosher / allergy perspective where this would be an issue. Can you ask whichever Muslim parent you're friendliest with? Am sure they'd be really happy that you're trying to include their kids and let you know? Buffets + kids are just a bit tricky with this sort of concern.

You may find they don’t show up depending on how religious they are. I say this as someone who lives in a high muslim population area. Birthday parties aren’t a thing around here.
if they have confirmed… generally just avoid pork… you can get halal chicken slices etc

Or ask them- what is ok for one person on the internet won’t be ok for another person you know.

Again as someone in mixed culture/religious family Muslims are more than capable of managing their own dietary restrictions. If you must have a plate of cured meats then the people who don’t want to eat it will simply not eat it.

I agree. My family is mixed religion and the Muslims just don’t eat what they don’t want to eat. It isn’t a big deal. They do do birthday parties though.

However, I do always make sure there is something that they can eat, or just provide something everyone can eat. Usually fish or a veggie option.

Well you don't want children accidently eating it do you so if you are going to have it, then keep it separate, are you purposely being naive ?

I always did separate boxes for each child and asked about individual dietary requirements beforehand. I don't mind catering for individual preferences, but I'm absolutely not changing my diet to suit someone else's.

Can your family members really not make it through a 2 hour children's party without a plate of meat???

Children in Muslim families have also been successfully managing their own dietary needs and are quite capable of not eating pork or non halal meat even if it’s in a mixed buffet

Why do you want to have pork/ham ?
Chicken and Beef would be good if you must have meat.
It is a children’s party - so why do you want to provide a meat platter for adults?

Please dont put cured pork meats on the same table,it can be offensive and easily touched by children. Surely your family can manage without for one day,you can get smoked chicken, smoked cheese, pickles.

Cured meats are a known carcinogen… why would you want to serve family one of the only known and proven cancer causing foods?

Asda do a good range of halal cured meats if you must have them

How will you make sure no hands/utensils touch meat and then the other food? Will there be spare food so if meat is dropped on veggie food you have enough to replace it?

Id do a halal table and a non halal table and do a sign for them. Nothing worse than eating something you cant have even by accident.

We dont eat halal. Although, when I did a party I catered it all halal.

They can but I don’t see why they should when it’s something that I enjoy serving at parties and they enjoy eating? I would like to cater to all guests, giving everybody food that they’ll enjoy. 😊

It’s a party for my daughter. Attending will be all of our family as well as some children in her class. There will be approx 10 Muslim guests out of over 50 people.