[Sca-cooks] Re: one for the pros

[Nicolas Steenhout]

>About how much can I anticipate losing to shrinkage?  If I start with a
>50-pound roast, how much will it weigh when it's done?

Ha!  Depends entirely on how quickly you cook the thing.  The harsher and
more intense the heat, the more shrinkage.

Also depends on the cut, and type of meat.  A usual amount of shrinkage
would be 15% to 20%.

If your roast has a bone in, don't forget to count the weight of the thing
in your equation.  It is hard to tell how much your bone weighs.  In
chicken, you have about 60% bone and 40% meat.  In a whole beef, you have
about the opposite, 60% meat and 40% bone, but when you're talking
particular pieces of meat, it gets difficult to say.

1/4 pound meat per person is about right for that kind of serving.  I tend
to count an extra 10% of food than necessary, like an extra 18 people, so
you'd be feeding about 193 people.  This would mean about 48 pounds of
cooked meat.  Add about 10 pounds of meat to shrinkage, you'd need a 60
pound roast.  Then, if you have a bone in, you may get about 25-30%, which
means say a 75 pound roast.  Give or take.  Better to have left overs than
not enough food, but you have to make sure you don't over do it lest you
really go broke.

Muiredach mac Loloig
Rokkehealden Shire
aka
Nicolas Steenhout
"You must deal with me as I think of myself" J. Hockenberry