BBQ for about 45 people?

[darcymum]

About half will be children, how can I feed them all without bankrupting myself? Recipe ideas please.

Lots of Side dishes?
They will fill people up.

How about:

Home made Coleslaw
Potato Salad (with chopped boiled eggs and some cheap offcuts of bacon through it,sweetcorn peppers, bit of mustard with the mayonnaise etc)
Feta (you can buy basics) and olive salad?

Where burgers etc are concerned, not sure if already made ones are cheaper, but I always use half good mince and half cheap as the fat in the latter gives more flavour.

Making skewers with chunks of meat - you can beef these up with bits of red onion, peppers and cherry tomatoes and mushroom to make the meat go further.

Cheaper sausages (not the really cheap though!) can be made to taste lovely if you slice them lengthways - make sure it's not all the way through - and spread with cranberry sauce and mustard then put them on skewers (to close the slice iykwim) and alternate with Bay leaves. Makes them taste v expensive.

Chicken wings are cheap and be glazed with a bbq glaze (ketchup, soy, honey etc) or chinese (five spice)for different flavour.

Sorry if this isn't what you were getting at in terms of help!

Oh and I would do some pasta salads for good measure too - and kids usually eat those too!

ask everyone to bring meat to feed their family - is what I would expect at a BBQ.

Children only eat the burgers, sausages and buns anyway - you don't need to go to a lot of trouble.

I wouldn't buy value though, go to your local butcher and see if you can do a deal with him. Although there are always deals on BBQ food at the supermarkets at the moment, even Tesco Finest!

As long as there are cheese slices, and tons of ketchup available you will be onto a winner.

Feed them first, then you can concentrate on the adults.

That's really helpful thanks.

I wasn't going to ask anyone to bring food (although if they do that's great) just drinks. Another top tip for the tight-fisted and poor I heard was buy chipolata sausages for the rolls.

I think the nicest BBQ (despite my many years fannying around to the contrary) is the sausage & burger type. I've given up titting around with anything else after many years of trying to out-do myself every time the barbie comes out. I'm with TLOTN - I'd push the boat out a bit/concentrate my efforts on some nice side dishes - salads, garlic bread, relishes etc. Hardly anyone ever makes homemade coleslaw any more yet you can make a vatful for a couple of quid and it is a gazillion times nicer than anything you could buy. Ditto homemade garlic bread. Aldi do fab part-baked ciabatta loaves & rolls which are great for stuffing burgers into. Lidl do huge 1 kilo tubs of the lushest greek yogurt - I'd make homemade Tzatziki with that - always nice with burgers & sausage (TBH I tend to leave out the mint - it's the garlic that counts IMHO).
I agree with notwaving too - try telephoning your local butcher with some rough numbers of how many burgers & sausage you'd want and I reckon they'll do you a fab deal.