Advanced options
Rule of thumb: 2-3 pieces of meat per adult (one burger, one sausage, one chicken piece), half that for children, plus buns to match, a veggie option for 1 in 10, and sides at ~150g salad and a handful of crisps each. Cook chicken through (75C, juices clear): the annual food-poisoning statistics are mostly chicken and mostly BBQs.
What The BBQ Food Calculator Works Out
- Shopping list: one burger, one sausage and one chicken piece per adult, half rations for children, buns and rolls to match, a veggie option for one guest in ten, 150g of salad and a handful of crisps a head, all scaled by appetite (0.75 for lunchtime grazing, 1.3 for teenagers and the main-event evening barbecue).
- Total meat items: burgers plus sausages plus chicken, about 3 per adult and 1.5 per child. Barbecue catering fails in one direction only, which is why this folk formula has survived every food trend.
- Items per adult and children's share (advanced): edit the burger, sausage and chicken counts (butcher's sausages outperform premium burgers for the marginal pound) and what fraction of an adult portion a child eats. Teenagers are adults for this purpose.
- Vegetarian guests (advanced): set the share of vegetarians or vegans; the veggie option has graduated from afterthought to planning line, and corn and halloumi earn their grill space for everyone.
- Packs to buy (advanced): the counts rounded up to typical supermarket pack sizes: burgers in 4s, sausages in 8s, chicken thighs in 6s, buns in 6s. Over-catering converts gracefully: cooked sausages into next-day rolls, burgers frozen, only the salad perishing unloved.
- Grill time (advanced): items divided by what the grill holds, at about 20 minutes a round. Chicken goes on first and moves to the cool side of a two-zone fire; sausages need patience over flame that burgers forgive.
- Fuel (advanced): about a kilo of charcoal per 20 minute round plus one to light, with 30 to 40 minutes for the coals to ash over before cooking; gas burns around 300g an hour on a two or three burner grill.
- Estimated food cost (advanced): meat items at your average price (GBP 1.20 by default), buns at about 25p, veggie options at GBP 1.50 and salad at 60p per 100g, which lands well under a restaurant starter per head. Keep separate plates and tongs for raw and cooked, cook chicken to 75C with juices running clear, and let nothing meaty loiter in the sun: the UK's summer food-poisoning spike is substantially a barbecue phenomenon.
Further reading: Food Standards Agency: barbecue food safety.