Pickled devilled eggs and tomato and zucchini casserole will take pride of place at any potluck party.
Careful organisation is key to making your party go with a swing
Americans are fond of potluck parties where each guest contributes a dish. The most elaborate potluck I ever attended was my own wedding, to which each guest brought a dish in lieu of gifts. We feasted on truffled pea soup and caviar tea sandwiches. At the other end of the potluck spectrum was my daughter’s second-grade graduation breakfast, a festive hodgepodge of childchild-made scones, store-bought red velvet doughnuts and boxes of hot coffee.
Both parties were total successes, with a perfect mix of dishes appropriate to the occasion. That’s because they had the most important potluck ingredient in common: a strong organiser.
The secret of a great potluck isn’t good cooking; it’s careful planning.
A potluck host is like a choreographer whose role is to create a dance rather than a mosh pit, distributing the burden of the cooking so that no one has to work too hard and giving guests a chance to shine by allowing them to show off their very best dishes.
The host is also in charge of the flow of the meal, keeping track of what everyone is bringing to make sure there’s an interesting selection without any duplicated dishes.
“As a potluck organiser, I’ve learned that it works out better if I’m a little dictatorial about assigning dishes,” said Amy Thielen, the author of the 2013 cookbook The New Midwestern Table.
Thielen grew up in northern Minnesota, where potlucks were pretty much the only parties people gave. Her strategy is to make the central meat dish, then assign the rest of the meal according to people’s strengths, asking her friend with the clay oven to bring his homemade bread, the friend with the vegetable garden to bring pickled asparagus.
“I’ve learned the hard way that a hands-off approach can result in four kinds of cucumber salad,” she said.
Kristin Donnelly, who wrote the 2016 cookbook Modern Potluck, prefers to be slightly more relaxed. She suggests setting up an online sign-up sheet (she uses Google Docs) that everyone can view, but with broad categories — dips, salads, desserts — so that guests can help shape the party and bring dishes they are excited to make.
“As a host you do want to do some planning, but you don’t want to give in to your inner control freak,” she said. “When your guests can see what everyone else is bringing, they’ll self-edit and you won’t get six platters of devilled eggs — at least you probably won’t.”
One thing hosts do not have to worry about is facilitating conversation among strangers. The very nature of the format gives guests an easy icebreaker: the food itself, who made what and how you got it there. Devilled eggs always have a backstory.
As for being a good potluck guest? Donnelly recommends that you think about logistics before signing up for your dish.
Will you go to the party from home, where you can pull a warm casserole from the oven? Or will you be at work and need to make your dish the night before? If that’s the case, a grain salad or cheesecake bars hold up well when made in advance.
I usually volunteer to bring a fluffy salad made with hardy greens (baby kale, mature spinach, radicchio) that can hold up well for a few hours, and I dress it right before serving. It’s colourful, light and goes with almost everything. It’s also one of the less glamorous things you could make, so it often gets overlooked by cooks seeking a more stunning presentation.
But it’s always gone when the party is over. No matter what you bring, it’s best to garnish your offering in situ, especially those grain or potato salads, which can get a little dull sitting in the fridge for too long.
“A squeeze of lemon, some olive oil and some fresh herbs right before serving really take things up notch,” Donnelly said.
As for the casserole, that nearly indispensable classic of the potluck table, both she and Thielen are big fans of the 9-by-13-inch baking pan, which you can use for anything from vegetable tians to peach cobblers and is easy to carry, wrapped in foil and nestled in a cardboard box to keep it warm.
The photographer and food blogger Leela Cyd loves small glass canning jars, which make transporting individual servings of chilled soup or chocolate pudding easy and eliminate the need for plates.
Her favourite? “Greek salad in a Weck jar,” she said. “You layer the heavier things first: the feta, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes and dressing. Then you put the lettuce on top and people shake it just before they open the jar.”
I like the 2-quart Ball jars for carrying watermelon lemonade or iced tea to a party because you can seal the tops, then use a small ladle to serve.
If all goes smoothly, guests get to linger over a varied and delicious spread, and hosts are left to enjoy the fact that they are giving a party and did not have to cook everything themselves.
Cyd advises hosts to reinvest all that saved prep time in the other details that make a party memorable. For her, that means picking flowers for the table. For me, I might actually get a chance to take a shower before guests arrive. Always take a moment for yourself, she said: “It will make you happy.”