I love to make meals that can be prepared in large batches. Then there’s plenty of leftovers for the next day, and also plenty to bag up and put in the freezer for the next meal.
When you’re feeding a crowd, you don’t want anybody leaving hungry, and these recipes are great because they’re easily scalable, so you don’t run out of food. Included are simple and filling side options to help round out these meals.
1) Big-Pot Chili
This is a one pot chili made with seasoned beans, scalable with rice or cornbread as a side. When I make a big batch of chili, I like to use a ground meat like ground beef, or ground turkey if you’re looking for a leaner option, and then add beans and plenty of vegetables including canned corn.
I like to serve this dish as a chili bar buffet sort of situation, where you’ve got crackers or corn chips, shredded cheese, sour cream, hot sauce, and maybe cut up green onion. That way you can add a lot more to your chili and stretch the one pot a little bit longer.
2) Baked Ziti
This is pasta tossed with marinara, ricotta or cottage cheese, and mozzarella, with an option for frozen spinach, then baked in the oven. Baked pasta dishes can be pretty forgiving, but be sure to keep your pasta cooked al dente and add plenty of sauce before you bake it so it doesn’t dry out or overcook.
Saute some mushrooms, onions, or bell peppers and add those in when you mix the sauce. If you’re adding frozen spinach, make sure to rinse it under water and then squeeze out the excess moisture before you add it in.
3) Red Beans and Rice
This is canned or soaked red beans cooked with sliced smoked sausage or ham hock, served over rice. This one’s a crowd pleaser in my house, and nobody leaves the table hungry.
I like to slice the smoked sausage thin and then cook it in the bottom of the pan first to try to get some nice color on the sausage. I feel that this adds a great char flavor to your beans. I like to make cornbread for the side for this and serve it with Louisiana style hot sauce.
4) Lentil Soup
This is a version of lentil soup made with brown or green lentils, lemon, and toast served on the side. My favorite version of this dish starts with onions, carrots, and celery cooked in butter in the bottom of a big soup pot.
Add your lentils and plenty of vegetable stock and simmer until the lentils become soft. For a real authentic flavor, add plenty of lemon, salt, pepper, and a couple dashes of cumin. For a nice filling side, you can serve this with pita bread and hummus.
5) Sheet-Pan Sausages and Potatoes
This is sausage, potatoes, and vegetables roasted on one sheet pan in the oven. To help cook everything evenly on the sheet pan, I like to give the potatoes a head start by cutting them up and either boiling them or microwaving them.
Try to keep your veggies, your potatoes, and your sausage roughly cut to about the same size to help them cook evenly. I like to serve this with every type of mustard and hot sauce I have set out on the counter for people to help themselves.
6) Egg Fried Rice
This is day-old fried rice with eggs, peas, carrots, onion, soy, and sesame. You’ll get the best results for this dish if you use day-old cold rice, but if you don’t have day-old rice, just cook your rice, spread it out on a sheet pan, and put it in the fridge for as long as you can before you prepare the dish.
When I make the eggs for this dish, I like to whisk them with a little bit of soy sauce and sesame oil and then fry them in a very hot pan with a little bit of oil. If you need to stretch this into a larger batch, you could easily double the eggs or add a couple extra scoops of frozen mixed vegetables.
7) Breakfast for Dinner
This is eggs turned into pancakes, served with fruit as an optional side. In my house, breakfast for dinner is always an easy and convenient fallback option when you need to feed a lot of people without a lot of food in the fridge.
Pancakes are a great way to make just a few ingredients stretch into a lot of food to feed a lot of people, and you can make them even fancier by adding things like fruit, nuts, or chocolate chips, or even lemon zest and nutmeg.
You could serve almost any kind of fruit with this as a side, and if you have some extra eggs lying around, you could always scramble them and add some cheese and serve that as another breakfast option as well.
8) Garlic Oil Spaghetti
This is spaghetti that’s been tossed in oil with garlic and browned breadcrumbs. Pasta is a great, affordable, high-volume option to feed a lot of people without a lot of extra prep work. I like to heat up butter and olive oil in a pan and then add tons of minced garlic, cook it until it’s golden brown, and then add my cooked spaghetti.
To dress up your breadcrumbs, brown your butter in a pan first, then add the breadcrumbs, then add a tiny pinch of anchovy paste, salt, and pepper, and stir to combine and cook until golden brown. I always add tons and tons of grated parmesan to a dish like this as well.
9) Tuna Noodle Casserole
This is tuna and peas with either a white sauce or a cream-based soup and a crunchy top, typically baked in the oven. I like to use macaroni noodles for this, or even cavatappi, which is kind of the pigtail spring-shaped macaroni noodle.
Make sure to add plenty of liquid, either your sauce or your soup, because this dish can dry out as the pasta starts to absorb the liquid. If you need to feed even more people, just a couple more cans of tuna and another box of cooked noodles and you’re all set.
10) Split Pea Soup
This is a soup consisting of split peas and broth, typically cooked with a ham hock or a ham bone and onions. If you’re using a ham hock, go ahead and throw it in the bottom of the soup pot first and fry it in some oil to really get some color and flavor on it before you build your soup around it.
I like to add a little bit of heavy cream to this soup when it’s almost done to give it a smoother consistency. This one goes great with dinner rolls and butter, sliced bread and butter, or a light salad.
11) Black Bean Tacos
This is a build-your-own taco bar centered around seasoned black beans. A good rule of thumb I like to use is to assume that everyone’s going to eat at least two tacos.
I like to cook the onions and the garlic in butter first before I add in the seasoning. A whole cabbage shredded up is a really easy way to make a large batch of slaw to go on the side with this.
12) Chickpea Curry
This is canned chickpeas stewed in coconut milk and canned tomatoes with onion and either curry spices or curry paste. This is one of those dishes that’s super affordable to make a very large batch of, and everyone will think you spent all day cooking it.
I like to saute my onions in butter and then add my curry paste to the hot pan, stirring it continuously for about 30 seconds to really wake up the spices before adding the coconut milk and the chickpeas. Serve this with warm pita bread with garlic butter spread on it.
13) Classic Mac and Cheese
This is cooked boxed pasta tossed with a homemade cheese sauce, with the option to add a salad or hot sauce on the side. Take your time making the roux for this dish. Add equal parts butter and flour to a warm pan and cook until the flour smell goes away and it smells like toasted nuts. That’s how you know it’s ready.
I like to use a combination of mild cheddar, sharp cheddar, gouda, and a few slices of American cheese to keep my sauce from separating. I add a little bit of Dijon mustard and smoked paprika to my mac and cheese at home. Salad is a great side for this dish because you can make a big bowl of it and it cuts through the richness.
14) Stuffed Baked Potatoes
This is baked potatoes topped with chili, butter, cheese, and sour cream. I like to prepare baked potatoes the night before, so if I have a lot of hungry guests they’re not waiting on the potatoes to be done cooking.
A trick I like to use to season my potatoes for baking is to poke them all over with a fork and then put them in a gallon ziplock bag with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Seal the bag and toss them vigorously. This gives you a really great crunchy exterior when you bake them in the oven.
For a large crowd, leave out lots of options for toppings. Chili, butter, cheese, sour cream, even steamed broccoli.
15) Cabbage Sausage Skillet
This is caramelized onion and cabbage with smoked sausage cooked in a skillet, with the option to add white beans to stretch this dish to be fuller. Start with the cabbage for this dish so you can cook most of the moisture out before adding your onions and your sausage, because you want to get a good char on those.
I would add white beans or even red beans to this dish to make it more filling, but if so I would probably add a can of diced fire roasted tomatoes along with it to keep it from being too dry. Serve this with sliced buttered bread and every kind of mustard you have.
16) Minestrone Soup
This is a classic Italian tomato vegetable soup served with pasta. I like to serve this with any kind of small pasta, but instead of cooking it in the soup, I’ll cook it on the side and serve it that way so people can add as much or as little as they want. Plus it won’t sit overnight in the soup and soak up all the liquid and get soft.
You can really put just about any vegetable in this one as well. Just start with your hard ones like onions, carrots, and bell pepper before you add the tomatoes and the beans. If you have a parmesan rind in the fridge, you should throw it in and cook it for the entire length of the reducing process to add some excellent flavor. I like to leave out a big old bowl of grated parmesan to go with this soup.
17) Sloppy Joes
This is beef or lentils in a tangy sauce with pickles, served on a bun. If you want to stretch the ground beef that you’re making for your sauce, add plenty of onions, canned tomatoes, and even ground turkey or ground chicken.
Potato salad, coleslaw, or potato chips are great classic sides to go with this that are not only cost effective but can feed a lot of people. Serve this one with pickles, pickled onion, or if you want something spicy, some pickled jalapenos on the side.
18) Roasted Veggie Pasta
This is roasted zucchini, onion, pepper, and carrot tossed with pasta, with sausage or beans as an optional add-on to stretch this farther. Roasting vegetables is a really great way to get lots of flavor on them and to save you on all the dishes on the stovetop.
Just roughly chop all of your vegetables, toss them in olive oil, salt, pepper, and minced garlic, and throw them in the oven at 400 for 15 minutes. I would heat up jarred pasta sauce for this and then take my roasted vegetables out, toss it in the sauce once they’re done, and then add the pasta.
If you’re doing beans, heat them up in the marinara sauce. If you’re doing sausage, cut it thin and roast it with the vegetables. Parmesan cheese is a great protein source and a good option for the topping on this dish.
19) Quesadillas
These are pan-fried tortillas filled with either beans or cheese, and spinach if you want to hide it from the kids. If you want to hide spinach in this dish, make sure you pan fry it first to get all of the moisture out, otherwise you won’t really be able to sneak it in without making a mess.
I like to make a sour cream with lime juice, lime zest, salt, pepper, and a little dash of cumin, and serve it on the side with the quesadillas. If you’re trying to stretch the cheese you have to feed a lot of people, just make sure you’re adding just enough to seal your quesadillas when you flip them over and cut them.
20) Eggs in Tomato Sauce
This is canned tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers made into a sauce with eggs poached in it, and bread served on the side for dipping in the sauce. This is reminiscent of shakshuka but without the fresh tomatoes, just substituting canned, and it’s begging to have a red pepper added to it as well.
When I make this one, we go very heavy on the spices and we’re never shy on the fresh toasted bread served with butter. Simmer your sauce on a low temperature with a lid over top of it to keep it from cooking down too much and losing a lot of its volume through evaporation. If you’re feeding a lot of people, crack as many eggs onto the top as you can and leave the lid on to steam them, making perfectly poached eggs.
21) Chicken and Rice Bake
This is chicken thighs cooked with rice, saving the drippings, with frozen peas added, all cooked in one pan. If I were making this dish, I would cook the rice separately on the stove and then do the one pan bake on a sheet pan or in a baking dish with the chicken thighs and whatever vegetables you choose.
I make a version of this where I save all of the drippings from the pan from the roasting and then mix it with some heavy cream and a little bit of Dijon to make a really nice sauce to pour over top of everything. Chicken thighs are great for feeding a lot of people because they’re more affordable than chicken breasts, and it’s really hard to overcook them because of their high fat content.
22) Hamburger Helper Skillet
This is ground beef or ground turkey, macaroni, broth, tomato paste, and cheese, the homemade version. I like to brown my ground meat first before adding any liquid, this really helps develop a nice flavor.
Make sure when you add the uncooked macaroni that you’ve got enough liquid in the pan to cook it all the way. When I add the cheese to this dish, I like to shred it on top and then throw the entire pan in the oven to really get a nice brown melt on the cheddar cheese. This meal is great with sliced bread and butter.
23) Enchilada Casserole
This is enchiladas, but instead of rolling them as is typical, it’s layered more like a lasagna, and salsa is added for extra moisture, with pickled jalapeno on the side. I like to use onions, garlic, and bell peppers, and either black beans or ground beef for my filling, and then just add the can of enchilada sauce right to it and mix it all together.
Then layer it with the tortillas and the filling and the tortillas and the filling and cheese in between. Make sure to add a little bit of cheese on top before you bake it. You could also make a version of this on a sheet pan, just use flour tortillas instead of corn and they’ll get nice and crispy. Serve this with sour cream, pickled jalapenos, hot sauces, and tortilla chips.
24) Broccoli Rice Casserole
This is rice cooked with broccoli and sauce, with the option to add rotisserie chicken. When I make this, I like to cook the rice first and also steam the broccoli separately to give it a little bit of a head start, so I’m not waiting for it all to finish before I can take it out of the oven.
Shredded rotisserie chicken is a great way to add a bunch of protein and to make this dish even more filling, and if you’ve got a lot of people to feed you could just make twice as much rice, grab one more chicken, and make a double batch in two separate pans.
Add plenty of cheese on top to keep it from drying out when you’re baking it in the oven, and this will also help to add some extra protein. I like to crumble up crackers like Ritz crackers or club crackers and throw them on under the cheese as well.
25) Pasta E Fagioli
This is a pasta bean soup with tomatoes and a parmesan rind if you have it. This is a great hearty, filling soup that you can easily add extra beans to, or crumbled spicy Italian sausage if you really want it to be more filling.
Serve this with garlic breadsticks or plenty of crusty bread on the side to soak up all the great liquid. This soup is typically served with ditalini or some other type of small pasta. This is a traditional Italian working class meal, so this one’s great for feeding a lot of people at low cost.
26) Pulled Pork
This is slow cooked pork shoulder cooked until it shreds apart. This is great in sandwiches, tacos, or more. When I make pulled pork, I like to use bone-in pork shoulder because I find that it tends to have a better flavor.
I like to deeply score the fat cap and then season heavily with minced onion, garlic, and jalapeno, and then cook the pork overnight at 225 in the oven with the fan on low for up to 16 hours.
This is great for feeding a crowd at low cost because pork shoulder tends to be a more affordable piece of meat, and you can set up buns, barbecue sauce, taco shells, really you name it.
27) Green Salad and Grilled Cheese
This is a big salad with grilled cheese cut up into strips and used as croutons. I would personally cut the grilled cheese into little squares, not just strips, because an entire hot long piece of sandwich might wilt your salad and be hard to eat.
Add in whatever veggies you’ve got lying around in your salad, or even hard boil some eggs or add some leftover rotisserie chicken to make it even more filling. I like to leave a few grilled cheese whole as well, in case you’ve got any kids that want to eat something besides salad. Leave out a couple different options, like some of the half full salad dressing bottles you have in your fridge.
28) Potato Soup
This is a soup consisting of diced potatoes, onions, and broth. For feeding a lot of people, it doesn’t get much more affordable than potatoes, and this soup is a great way to utilize them. I like to cut up onion, garlic, celery, and even carrots, and saute them hard in butter before you add your diced potatoes and then chicken stock and heavy cream.
As this soup cooks and reduces, the potatoes start to break down and it will naturally start to thicken up. I like to add lots of fresh herbs and serve this with saltine crackers and grated parmesan cheese. When you’re prepping your potatoes for this soup, do your best to cut them all the same size so they all cook evenly and you don’t wind up with some that aren’t quite done yet.
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