What to Do With Catering Leftovers the Next Day

Break the pans down before you tidy the room, not after. Everything else on this page is technique.

The end of a party is the worst possible time to do careful work, which is exactly why it goes badly. People stack the trays in the fridge as they are, still deep and still warm, and by the next afternoon the food is worse than it needed to be. Fifteen minutes of decanting at the end of the night is the difference between a second dinner and a bin bag.

How should you pack down catering trays at the end of a party?

Shallow, not deep. Get the food into containers no more than a couple of inches deep, spread out and not piled, and get them into the fridge quickly.

A full pan is a heat battery. Put it in a fridge as a full pan and the middle of it stays warm for hours while the edges chill, which is the situation you're trying to avoid. Splitting the same food across three shallow containers cools it in a fraction of the time. Nothing fancy is required. Takeaway containers, freezer bags laid flat, a couple of baking dishes with cling film.

The general good practice most kitchens work to is getting hot food into the cold within about two hours of it coming off the heat, and less in warm weather. That's ordinary kitchen advice, nothing specific to a caterer, and if you need an authoritative answer for a particular dish, ask the kitchen that cooked it. On the phone, at 718-799-7160, somebody can tell you what is in a tray and how they would treat it. A blog post can't.

While you're at it, separate things that were sharing a pan. Anything that has been sitting in liquid will keep absorbing it in the fridge, and a piece of chicken that spent the night in the bottom of a tray of sauce is a different thing by morning.

Which catering dishes reheat well?

Most of the tray, honestly. Some better than others.

Rice

Rice reheats better than its reputation. The trick is moisture. A portion out of a $85 pan of Jollof Rice or a $40 pan of White Rice goes into a pan or a dish with a splash of water sprinkled over it, covered tightly, and heated gently. The steam brings it back. Dry heat on rice, uncovered, produces exactly the hard-edged result people complain about.

A frying pan beats a microwave for rice if you have five minutes. Medium heat, a lid, a little water, stir once. Jollof in particular is worth the extra effort, because reheated well it is nearly as good as it was, and reheated badly it's sad.

Stewed sides

Greens are the easiest thing in the fridge. Leftovers from a $60 pan of Collard Greens go back into a pan with their own liquid over a low heat and come back completely. They're arguably better the next day, the way most stewed things are.

Baked pasta and mac

A $90 pan of Mac and Cheese wants a cover, a low oven and patience, plus a splash of milk or water stirred through if it looks tight. Rushing it in a microwave on full power splits the texture. Low and slow, covered, is the answer.

Fried food

This is where technique matters. Pieces from a $100 pan of Fried Chicken should never go near a microwave, which steams the coating and makes it soft. Use a hot oven, a wire rack or a tray, no cover, and give it long enough to crisp. An air fryer does the same job faster. Done properly, day-two fried chicken is genuinely good. Done in a microwave, it isn't.

What does not come back?

Anything that was already crisp and is now wet. Salad that has been dressed, once it has sat, is done. Fried food that spent the night under sauce will reheat as something else. Bread that was on the table all evening is toast at best.

None of that is a reason to throw the tray out. It is a reason to sort at pack-down rather than at reheat, and to eat the fragile things first.

What is the best order to eat catering leftovers?

Fragile first, sturdy later.

How long any particular dish keeps depends on what is in it and how it was made, so it belongs to the people who cooked it and not to a rule of thumb. That's a fair question to ask on the call when you order, alongside the ones in the full ordering sequence for Brooklyn catering.

Can you turn the leftovers into a different dinner?

This is the better move, and it's the one people skip.

Leftover rice plus leftover protein, chopped and heated hard in one pan, is a different dinner and it takes ten minutes. Greens and rice together with a fried egg on top is a real meal. Chicken off the bone goes into a sandwich. Mac and cheese reheats into a side for something new instead of a repeat of Saturday's plate.

That's also how a big Sunday order stretches into the week without anyone feeling like they're eating the same meal four times, which is part of the appeal of ordering a Sunday dinner spread in Brooklyn in the first place.

Should you plan for leftovers when you order?

Some people do it deliberately, and it is a reasonable strategy when the guest list is uncertain. Ordering slightly over and knowing the surplus becomes lunches is a way of buying insurance against a headcount you cannot pin down. How to plan a catering order without a final headcount covers that trade in detail, including which trays absorb the uncertainty most cheaply.

The one thing to plan properly is the pack-down itself. Have the containers bought and in a cupboard before the party, not hunted for at the end of it. Have fridge space cleared. Ten minutes of preparation the day before turns the worst chore of the night into a quick job, and it is the same principle that makes holding trays hot with racks and foil work and that makes a buffet table laid out for throughput move a room. The food takes care of itself. The container situation does not.