Backyard Cookout Catering in Brooklyn When You Do Not Want to Grill

Can you cater a backyard cookout in Brooklyn instead of grilling?

Yes, and it's a more common order than people assume. Somebody who has hosted the yard three summers running eventually works out that they have never once sat down at their own cookout. They spend the afternoon behind a grill, they eat standing up at the end, and everyone thanks them for a party they did not attend.

Catering the yard fixes that. FreeTown African & American Cuisine is a family catering kitchen at 1172 Park Place in Crown Heights, and every price on our menu is a full pan, which is the format a backyard runs on anyway. Trays go on a table, people help themselves, the host sits down.

What replaces the grill at a Brooklyn cookout?

Suya, mostly. It's the closest thing on our menu to what a grill is supposed to deliver, and it is better than what most grills deliver.

Suya is Nigerian and Hausa in origin: meat rubbed in a dry spice blend and grilled. It's a grilled-meat tradition, not a barbecue one, and it lands on a cookout table as something people recognize as cookout food while also being the dish they end up asking about.

• Fried Chicken Suya at $120. Chicken with the suya spice on it. This is the tray to order first if you have never had it, because it makes sense to everybody immediately.
• Lamb Suya at $165. The top of our menu and the tray you order when the cookout is a real occasion rather than a Saturday. This is the one people photograph.

If you want the longer explanation of the spice and where it comes from before you order it for twenty people, we wrote what suya is and how it is made separately.

Can you order only the sides and let someone else grill?

Yes, and honestly it's the smartest version of the order for a lot of yards. Somebody in every family wants to grill. Fine. Let them grill the meat, which is the part they enjoy, and buy the part nobody enjoys making for thirty people.

Sides are where a home cookout falls apart. The meat is one person's project. The rice, the greens and the mac and cheese are four hours of separate work in a hot kitchen while the party is happening outside without you.

• Pan Jollof Rice at $85. West African tomato rice cooked with the seasoning in the grain. It is the single best thing you can put next to grilled meat and it isn't something a home kitchen turns out easily for a crowd.
• Mac and Cheese at $90. Every yard needs it and nobody wants to make it in July.
• Pan Collard Greens at $60. The Southern green on the list, and the cheapest way to make the table look like a spread rather than a pile of meat.

Those three trays cover the part of a cookout a grill cannot. The host cooks what they like and buys the rest.

What does a backyard cookout spread cost in Crown Heights?

Every number above is a full-pan price, sometimes called a party tray. None of them is the cost of one serving, so do not read $120 as what one person eats.

The whole catering list runs from $40 for a pan of white rice to $165 for lamb. A yard order usually draws from across that range and sits weighted toward the middle, because the sides are cheap and the thing you are replacing the grill with is not. How many pans of each you end up with is settled on the phone, not here. If you want to see all eighteen trays before you decide what the yard needs, the FreeTown catering menu has the full list with prices.

What should you sort out before you order for a yard?

Three things, and we will not fake any of them for you on a web page.

How many trays your headcount needs. We do not publish how many people a full pan feeds, because the honest answer depends on how many trays are out, whether someone is also grilling, and how long the afternoon runs. Call 718-799-7160, tell us roughly how many are coming and whether there is a grill going too, and we will size it with you.

How hot the food is. Suya carries heat by definition, but how much heat any given tray comes out with is a conversation, not a number on a page. If you have people in the yard who want it mild, say so on the phone when you order. Don't leave it to hope.

Whether we can deliver it, and on what terms. Ask us for your date and your address. A brownstone yard behind a walkup and a house with a driveway are different jobs, and we'd rather tell you the truth about yours than publish a blanket promise.

How do you run the table so the host still gets to sit down?

The point of catering the yard was to stop working, so set it up in a way that does not need managing.

• Put the trays on a table in the shade, not next to the grill. Heat plus a covered tray is how food goes wrong.
• Open two trays, hold the rest. Refill as they empty. Do not put everything out at the start.
• Keep the rice at the front of the line and the protein at the end.
• Give one person other than the host the job of watching the table. Any person. Nothing else on this list matters half as much.

If your event is a closed street and not a private yard, the constraints change quite a bit and block party catering in Crown Heights and Central Brooklyn covers the outdoor, no-power version of the same day. If the yard cookout is for a holiday weekend crowd, Fourth of July party trays in Brooklyn is closer to that order.

Ordering cookout trays from 1172 Park Place

FreeTown is a family kitchen with roots in Freetown, Sierra Leone, cooking West African and Southern food off one catering list. In a Brooklyn backyard that combination is the appeal: lamb suya and mac and cheese on the same table, from one kitchen, on one order. There's nowhere else in central Brooklyn you can buy that in a single call.

The number is 718-799-7160. Tell us the date, the rough headcount, whether anybody is grilling, and your ceiling, and we'll build the tray list around it.

For the wider view of how full-tray ordering works, party catering in Brooklyn is the general guide. If the gathering is a family occasion instead of a cookout, baptism and christening reception catering in Brooklyn covers that room.