3 Menu Ideas for Your Next Dinner Party

Dinner parties can be a great opportunity for you to flex your culinary muscles, as well as show off to your friends. Coming up with the perfect menu for your guests can be a difficult task, though. To spark some ideas, then, here are 3 varied options you can try out. 

Steaks

Providing your guests aren’t vegetarians, steak is a guaranteed winner for your dinner party. They don’t pair badly with a good bottle of red wine, either! Given you will only need to grill it to prepare it, it is also a fairly straightforward to cook. Getting the meat perfect can be a more difficult task than it would initially appear though. Overcooking a steak can make the meat overly dry and flavourless, while undercooked beef, while not necessarily dangerous from a health perspective, can be rubbery, and look unappealing to particular guests. It is therefore important to pay constant attention while grilling steak. You will probably want to wait until guests arrive before cooking them as well. This is both because steaks cook quickly, and you might also want to ask your guests beforehand how they prefer their steak cooked. Dry aged steaks from TAR are the perfect meat to best serve at your party because of it’s enhanced flavour that your guest will surely love.

When choosing a cut of steak for your dinner party, there is also plenty to choose from. Fillet can be a good choice if your guests aren’t too fond of fat, because it is nearly all meat. It is therefore one of the leaner and more tender cuts. However, the lack of fat can make it less flavoursome than other cuts. Rib-eye steaks, in this regard, are a good compromise, because the fat is in the middle. This makes the meat have a stronger taste, while still not requiring guests to cut off large pieces of fat from their food. Tomahawk steak, a variant of the rib-eye cut, is particularly popular for dinner parties, since they bear a striking resemblance to tomahawk axes, giving them a memorable aesthetic. 

Paella

A traditional Spanish meal, paella is a hearty rice dish usually containing seafood, though vegetarian variants also exist, and chorizo is also commonly added. What makes paella a great dish to make for dinner parties is its spectacle. The main spices used in paella are saffron and paprika, which contribute to its eye-catching, bright yellow colouring. Generally, it is also cooked and assembled in one large frying pan, which means the dish can also act as a centrepiece for your dinner table. The use of saffron also make it ideal for special occasions, since the spice is notoriously expensive, and its distinctive aroma will also make your meal stand out to your guests. One important thing to remember about cooking a paella is to always use short-grain rice, whether it be specific paella rice, or risotto rice. This is because it is much more effective at absorbing the sauce of a paella than long-grain varieties. 

Stuffed Aubergines

Given the increased commonality of plant-based diets, you may need to have a few vegetarian dishes in your repertoire for your next dinner party. It can be difficult to create flavourful dishes with these restrictions, so you might need to get a little bit more experimental. Stuffed aubergines can be a great option in this respect. This is because they are relatively simple to make, and you can also pick and choose what to include in the stuffing depending on your guests’ dietary preferences. The traditional Italian stuffed aubergine contains mozzarella and ricotta, but you can instead use tomatoes, peppers, and olives, if you are cooking for vegans.