Category: Hog Roast Catering

Today has been a rare day at Chef and Griddle when we have not been out to cater for an event. As we were not out cooking we have been using this day as sort of an admin day to make sure that we answer all of our enquiries as soon as possible.

We have had a vast number of enquiries the past few weeks, ever since we have gone into the new year the phone has not stopped ringing and the web form enquiries have been absolutely flooding in. To make your own enquiry for example a hog roast simply the contact tab on our website and fill in your name, event date, event location, telephone number, email address and which of our menus you would be interested in. It is very important that all of these fields are filled in as it allows us to calculate a much more accurate quote. Some people choose not to add their email address as they don’t want annoying spam emails, we do not send out spam emails just one friendly email to check you have received our menus. Alternatively some people do not like to put their phone number on our enquiry forms because they believe they may receive annoying sales calls, again we simply call to check you have received the menus. It is also helpful to include your phone number on our enquiry forms in case your email address is wrong and we can ring up to double check what it should be.

Once you have sent your enquiry through we will respond with our menus and include the price for that menu on the bottom. As well as the menus you have a price for we will send you along some additional menus we feel may suit your event, we might include something you hadn’t even originally thought of or thought it was something we could not do. Just remember when making your enquiry that Chef and Griddle can do as little or as much for your event as you wish and you need only ask, with a high probability that we can provide the requested service and with a quality to match dedicated event organisers in that particular area.

As the working week winds down for most people we at Chef and Griddle are loading up our vans ready for the weekends work hog roasting. The supposed blizzard is apparently nearly on us and we have already had one cancellation due to the weather. For our customers who have stuck to their guns and will be going through with their event are in a for a huge treat. Can you imagine anything better than being outside (or inside) with the snow coming down a hot pork roll in one hand and crispy crackling in the other? We have a very lucky hog roast Benfleet customer who is having freshly made and seasoned mulled wine as well as hot apple juice and cinnamon with their hog roast tomorrow

Today we made a booking for a lovely woman who is having roast chicken as well an afternoon style tea. Roast chicken is fantastic when cooked spit roast style, the smell of slow roasting chicken is hard to beat and it also looks amazing with multiple chickens turning on a spit. To supplement chicken we make freshly made stuffing and tasty gravy using the juices from the chickens. When served into a bread roll with stuffing and drizzled with a bit of the homemade gravy the chicken is exceptional, it falls off the bone without being too greasy. The afternoon style menu is something we do quite often and in this case consists of freshly baked scones, cakes as well as having an urn of tea, coffee and mints that the customers can help themselves too.

With Easter coming up in the next few months we will be very busy at Chef and Griddle and with the coming of spring we will have a fresh batch of nice spring lambs. As brutal as it sounds it will be excellent to have these lambs to stick on our spit roast machines as they are perfect when seasoned with rosemary and herbs and slow cooked to perfection.  These fresh new lambs will also be excellent on our barbecue menus as awesomely tasty lamb kebabs.

We have had another busy week this week at Chef and Griddle. The office has been full of enquiries ready for the summer weddings. We have also taken a lot of bookings for the next few months, an example would be a machine hire for the 1st of February. We also had a last minute booking yesterday afternoon for a classic hog roast for today, we quickly checked with our suppliers and they told us it was no problem to have a pig on such short notice. The hog roast Folkestone went as excellently smooth as all of our events, the classic hog roast is a standard hog roast consisting of a whole spit roasted pig with all the lovely crackling that it provides. This is then served into bread rolls and served with apple sauce and stuffing for a fantastic meal.  We arrived onsite six hours before the serve time as the hog roast was for 80 people which requires a 50 – 60 kilo pig and we say that for every 10 kilos an extra hour of cooking time is added.

As the pig was slowly turning and cooking for the whole six hours the smell of the roasting meat was given chance to permeate the venue thankfully we were cooking indoors as it looked like it was threatening to snow all evening and the wind was bitterly cold.

A lot of people enquiring about our services do not realise we can roast indoors but in fact it is not as big a deal as people make it out to be. Our machines are all sealed units which run off gas not coal which produces a cleaner heat without all the smoke, they are all also gas safety certified to show that they do not leak or produce any harmful fumes. In the slightly more confined space the roasting smell was very strong and everyone in attendance was saying how amazing the smell and our catering setup was. The client thanked us heartily as we left because the event was a corporate party hog roast which had to be organised on short notice and that without it their client probably would have ended up eating sandwiches and a bag of crisps.

Welcome back to another update from Chef and Griddle. Now that all the Christmas and new year festivities are finished the office is absolutely heaving with new enquiries. This is because people are making all their enquiries and trying to get booked in for summer. We are also taking a lot of wedding enquiries now that we have turned into the new year as people realise that their Wedding is only Six months away instead of thinking it is a year away.

Over the Christmas period we had a long term hire for a customer the customer had originally decided to just hire the machine for 3 days while he sold hog roast at events, after having the machine for 3 days he decided that he wanted it for longer and he eventually had it for 10 days. As with the hog roast hire machine we can hire out our machines for as long or as short a time period as you want. As we manufacture our own machines we can guarantee their sturdiness and that they are simply the best on the market for reliability and getting that even hog cook hog roast and perfect crackling every time.

One of the weddings we have booked in during the new year madness is a wedding menu 3 for 150 guests. The wedding menu 3 is a very popular menu at the moment and consists of a choice of canapés to start with, a choice of whole roast meat such as pig, lamb, chicken, turkey or beef. Wedding menu 3 also comes with a choice of three salads and a potato option, a freshly made vegetarian alternative and a choice of dessert to finish off. The reason this menu is so popular is because it is halfway between our ever popular wedding menu 2 which just has canapés and no desserts and our wedding menu 4 which has the same as wedding menu 3 but with starters as well. For some customers they do not require starters and instead just want canapés and a reception drink for their guests to mill around, congratulate the bridge and groom and be served canapés so they do not get too drunk before the party has even began.

On Monday we catered for a Christmas party for a post office in Tetbury. As you would expect at this time of year post office’s are extremely busy and their employees will be stressed due to the amount of Christmas post. To help relieve some of this stress the boss had asked us to cook and serve a roast pig for their staff.

The weather was extremely cold and we honestly thought it was going to snow at one point but we just put our thick jackets on and stood a little bit closer to the hog roast machine as they provide quite a lot of warmth. The post office had asked us not to cook on site for the whole cooking period of six hours so we partly cooked the hog off site for four hours and then finished it on site for two hours when we got there.

The staff absolutely loved the hog roast and told us it was just what they needed to pick them up after a busy day, despite the cold everyone was in the best of spirits and asked us to join them in the pub afterwards, but unfortunately we had to get the machine cleaned and be on our way.

Cooking the pig in the manner that this customer requested is no problem for us, sometimes people only have access to their event venue for a certain amount of time and do not want to commit to having the pig cooking for the whole six hours. In instances such as this there a few things we can do; we can partly cook the pig off site and finish it on site (as we did here) or we could cook the whole pig off site and simply carve and serve it on site. Another option that people often ask us about is whether we can simply deliver a whole cooked pig and let them do all the serving, this is something we can absolutely do, we simply cook the pig and then bring it on a roasting tray to give to the customer.

Christmas is not too far away now and the number of enquiries we have had about Christmas hog roasts is amazing. A lot of people tell us that pork may not really suit the festive celebrations and ask if we can do any other meat. The answer is that we absolutely can and quite often do. We can do lamb which is absolutely fantastic when spit roasted and served with mint sauce and mustard and dill sauce. Even more festive than a lamb is our turkey roast where we roast numerous turkeys whole and serve them with piping hot stuffing and cranberry sauce. Spit roasted turkey is great for people that don’t the hassle of making their own Christmas dinner, which lets face it creates a lot of stress on what is supposed to be a fun family day. Our chef will turn up in his chef whites and your family can see the turkeys spin and roast for hours, you could also have seasonal vegetables with the turkey which we call our winter warmer menu – call the office for your free winter warmer quotation now.

Beef is also a fantastic spit roasted meat for this time of year, we cook whole beef sirloins and serve it with horseradish sauce, Yorkshire puddings and red wine gravy and is actually one of my personal favourites. Our sumptuous desserts are also fantastic with  a Christmas meal, we can make almost anything from chocolate torte to mince pies, one of our most popular desserts at this time of year is the sticky toffee pudding which is freshly prepared and I must say absolutely gorgeous.

We have a number of Christmas parties booked in at the moment and all look to be fantastic events, most of them are work parties. A lot of people booking their Christmas parties tell us they worry about their guests having to go outside and retrieve their food in the freezing cold the U.K is known for at this time of year. We always tell them that if there is a small amount of ventilation then we can very easily roast indoors and it is perfectly safe to do so, meaning their guests can stay toasty and warm in the venue.

This week has been another busy one for Chef and Griddle and it started with a bang! We catered for 200 people on bonfire night who wanted our classic hog roast menu which consists of whole spit roasted pig, professionally presented crackling and freshly made apple sauce and stuffing served into a roll.

The fireworks display was fantastic and it was clear that no expense was spared. The display started with a Guy Fawkes mannequin procession and ended in an explosive finale of fireworks launched one after the other in time to music.

To cater for this many people we roasted a whole hog as well as two pork legs which made us plenty of pork to serve that many people. Very large parties are not a problem for us as we can simply bring along more machines and cook more pigs and pork legs to go with them. We have catered for parties as large as 1000 people and above in the past with no problems. The weather was very cold as temperatures suddenly plummeted near the office this week but we barely felt it as we had the serving tent to break the wind and the hog roast machine to keep us warm as well as dashing around serving people.

The guests loved the hog roast which was served buffet style with four Chefs serving the food to make sure everyone was served in a timely manner and no one was left waiting for their hot rolls. The crackling was very popular, we had served it onto circular platters for guests to help themselves and it was a huge success. I personally love to put the crackling in the roll with pork stuffing and apple sauce as it creates a crunchy texture and the way in which we cook it stops it from breaking your teeth but is still crunchy at the same time. The way that we prepare it is to score the pig, pour fresh spring water on it then rub rock salt all over it which gives it the fantastic flavour as well as help it cook faster.

Bonfire night is always a fantastic night for us at Chef and Griddle and we are already looking forward to next year to enquire about bonfire night hog roasts for 2013 fill in an enquiry form on our website.

Halloween was a fantastic night for hog roasting and we had a very busy evening at Chef and Griddle. We are also looking ahead to bonfire night which will be another great night for hog roasting, whole flame roasted meat suits bonfire night to a tee, why roast Guy Fawkes when you can roast a pig? We can also provide BBQ catering which is quite simply unlike any BBQ you have had before, we source all our meats from top quality butchers and you can really taste the difference.

We can also freshly prepare bonfire night themed desserts such as sticky toffee apples and treacle pudding to end your bonfire night celebrations with a bang.If you are interested in a bonfire night hog roast it is a good idea to enquire now as the date is fast becoming booked up so move fast to avoid disappointment.

We have catered for a number of Halloween parties the past few days and at the weekend, however the one last night was probably the wildest. We found ourselves hog roasting in the middle of a forest in the lake district, this might seem impossible but all we really need to roast a hog is the machine, a bottle of gas and the pig. Everyone ate the pork rolls huddled around the camp fire and munched on their crackling which we had presented onto a circular platter. When the guests were done eating we cleared away the rubbish and there was no sign we were there in the first place apart from the remains of the fire.

Luckily our hog roast machines have inflated tyres so it wasn’t too hard to move it from the van to the campsite and back again even over the rough terrain.

The weather has been rather awful near the office recently but it is nothing compared to what the Americans are going through with hurricane Sandy at the moment. If it was to rain on the day of your event it would not be a problem for us at all as we bring mini gazebos to cover the cooking and serving area of the hog roast. We bring these gazebos along to all of our outside events as there are few things worse in life than a damp pig!