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Cooking for a crowd

Oven-Roasted Jerk-Inspired Chicken for 24

These are estimates. They come from rules of thumb, not a recipe we tested at this size. Go by the recipe's own doneness cues and a thermometer, and taste as you go.

The plan

Make 4 batches of the recipe as written: about 24 servings.

The recipe serves 6. How it cooks: sheet pans.

Pans, pots and the oven

  • 4 × 18x13-inch half sheet.
  • A home oven fits 2 at a time (one per rack on two racks), so that's 2 rounds in one oven, or fewer with a second oven.

Timing

  • Prep: about 1 hour 5 minutes of hands-on work for 4 batches (the recipe's 20 minutes each, a little faster once you're set up).
  • Oven: 2 rounds of about 43 minutes each, about 1 hour 31 minutes in all, with a few minutes between rounds for the oven to heat back up. Fill the next pans while the first ones bake, and keep any with meat, eggs or dairy in the fridge until they go in.

Good to know

  • Make it as 4 separate batches of the recipe as written, one 18x13-inch half sheet at a time (two at once if your mixer or bowl holds a double batch). The salt and spices in each batch stay as measured.
  • Don't put two batches in one deeper pan: it takes much longer and the middle can stay underdone. A bigger, shallower pan works if you rescale for it with the pan size converter.

Ingredients for about 24

The totals to shop for. Each batch uses the recipe's own amounts, so mix and season them one batch at a time.

  • Marinade
  • 16 green onions, roughly chopped
  • 2 medium onion, roughly chopped
  • 4–8 scotch bonnet or habanero peppers, stemmed; seeded for less heat
  • 16 cloves garlic
  • ¼ cup fresh ginger, sliced
  • ¼ cup fresh thyme leaves, or 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 2 ⅔ tbsp ground allspice
  • 2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1 ⅓ tbsp black pepper
  • ½ cup brown sugar
  • ¾ cup soy sauce
  • ½ cup lime juice
  • ½ cup vegetable oil
  • 2 tbsp kosher salt
  • Chicken
  • 14 lb bone-in skin-on chicken thighs and drumsticks
  • To serve
  • limes, cut into wedges

Rounded to kitchen measures. Eggs are rounded up to whole eggs.

Keeping a big batch safe

Back to the recipe More recipes for a crowd

How we work it out

  1. How it cooks decides how it grows. Baked dishes and casseroles are made as separate batches of the recipe as written, one pan's worth at a time. Soups, stews and chili go in one bigger pot, or several. Slow cooker and pressure cooker recipes get one batch per cooker or per round. Roasts become more roasts, not a bigger one. Skillet, griddle, grill and fried recipes cook in rounds.
  2. Pans and the oven. We assume a home oven with two racks, two baking dishes or cake pans per rack, or one sheet pan per rack. More pans than that means another round in the oven.
  3. Pots. The volume comes from the weight of the ingredients (about a liter for each kilogram; dry pasta, rice and grains count 2½ times, since they soak up water), in a pot no more than 3/4 full.
  4. What we don't simply multiply. Salt: add 3/4, taste, then the rest. Cayenne, chiles and hot sauce: start with 2/3. Ground spices and dried herbs: start with 3/4 once it's 3 batches or more. Bay leaves and other whole spices: about half the extra. Baking soda, baking powder and yeast: batch by batch. Frying oil and the water for boiling: by the pot, not the recipe. A big pot of soup or stew: hold back a tenth of the liquid.
  5. Timing. Each extra batch adds about 3/4 of the recipe's prep time. A big pot takes about 3 more minutes per extra quart to come to a simmer on one burner. Meat browns in batches no bigger than the recipe's. A full oven bakes a little slower: swap and turn the pans halfway, and allow 5 to 10 minutes more.

These are our rules of thumb, not tests of each recipe at each size. The recipe's own doneness cues and a thermometer come first.