How long to cook this for??

[wombpaloumbpa]

Hi I'm quite a good cook but never catered for large parties before really. I'm cooking a Spanish chicken and chorizo dish tmw for 15. I've got 4lb of chicken thighs and all the other ingredients (chorizo, onions, peppers, tomatoes etc) and a huge pan.

Just wondering how long I might need to cook it for?! Help

Nigella says for two trays, cook for an hour, swapping top and bottom tray at half time.

That sounds about right to me.

If you're doing it as a traybake, so long as it's all spread out it shouldn't take much longer than a smaller meal.
I do a similar meal, so 40 minutes for the chicken, then the rest at intervals, but I'd allow a bit extra & swap the trays around.

Thanks/ I was actually thinking of doing it like a casserole in a big pot - would it be better to do the tray bake version? Eek

In a casserole at a gentle simmer I would budget an hour but start checking at 40 minutes.

It’s going to be yum. Not much can go wrong with this one. Make it earlier, give it 45 minutes and then 15 minutes to slowly reheat when you need to. Do not stress over this.

In fact, if you aren’t doing anything else earlier in the day, I would take the time to brown your chicken bits properly and get it cooking rather than just throw it in looking pale and … um…

THere is no need to cook it for longer than you would the same recipe for 5 people. The only difference would be that the overall prep will take longer - chopping veg, browning chicken etc. The only time that different cooking times really comes into play is if individual pieces of meat/veg are of different sizes - so a large jacket potato cooked whole takes longer than a medium sized potato cut into chunks. But in the oven you'd take the same amount of time to cook 5 large jackets as to cook one.

Ditto meat - a 2.5kg leg of lamb will take longer than a lamb chop. But 5 lamb chops weighing 100g each will takek the same amont of time as 1 lamb chop at 100g.

@TheSandgroper THANK YOU this is exactly what I needed to hear and exactly what I was planning to do! Yay

@TheTruthICantSay thank you that's very helpful!

I'm also making nigellas Guinness and chocolate cake and there is a small amount of Guinness that needs taking care of