Hosting a dinner party or special event can be a fun way to catch up with your nearest and dearest or celebrate a special occasion. You can’t help but be excited about the prospect of playing host in your own home, whipping up a range of special dishes and beverages for your guests to enjoy.
However, hosting is undoubtedly a much easier task when you have helpful tools, goods, and gadgets. If you plan on hosting many get-togethers in your home, you might see the value in adding these items to your must-have list:
Anything to Save Time
Dinner parties are all about timing. You want to prepare delicious food, but you also don’t want to spend your entire evening tucked away in a kitchen, leaving your guests to fend for themselves.
Click here to find a range of innovative kitchen tools and gadgets that will surely be useful for your next social event. You can buy several products to speed up food prep and even cooking time, like burger presses, choppers, juicers, and slicers. If you can replace many time-intensive tasks with new kitchen gadgets, you might be surprised by how much less time you have to spend in the kitchen.
Serveware
Serveware consists of anything you can use for serving food to your guests, such as soup pots, salad bowls, and platters. If you want your guests to help themselves to anything you make, serveware will be crucial to own. Rather than serving everyone their food on individual plates, you can place serveware with utensils in the middle of your dining table so they can serve themselves.
Cocktail Shakers and Bar Tools
If you plan to serve alcohol at your next dinner party, you don’t have to opt for boring bottles of beer and wine. Instead, you can get creative with cocktail shakers and bar tools. Purchase a range of spirits, sodas, and juices, and let your guests get to work creating their own beverage of choice.
If your guests aren’t familiar with how to make their own cocktails, provide recipes next to all the ingredients needed. There are so many delicious options to try, like Boulevardier cocktails, dry martinis, whiskey sours, and margaritas.
A Large Ice Bucket
No one wants to drink warm drinks that are supposed to be served cold. Unless you plan to make your fridge accessible to all guests, purchase a large ice bucket. Once filled with ice, an ice bucket can be the perfect party accessory. You can add drinks for your guests to drink or let them add their own. Whether it’s stored inside or outside, it can help keep beverages at a satisfactory temperature.
Serving Utensils
Serving utensils are kitchen goods that not everyone has unless they regularly serve large meals to multiple guests. Even the average family doesn’t always have slotted spoons, ladles, tongs, and scoops tucked away in their utensil drawer.
As a result, it can be a good idea to add serving utensils to your list of must-have goods for entertaining. Consider buying more than one of each type to ensure more than one person can take food from the same dish simultaneously.
Drink Dispensers
While you might already be providing cocktail shakers and ice buckets for your guests to help themselves, there’s nothing wrong with purchasing drink dispensers for those larger social gatherings. Punch is always a popular beverage option, but you can also use drink dispensers for non-alcoholic options like fruit juice.
Place your drink dispensers on a sturdy table with cups nearby for easy self-service. Don’t forget to refrigerate your drinks of choice before pouring them into the dispensers to keep them cooler for longer!
Bottle Openers
There are few things as disappointing as being about to serve your guests a bottle of wine or beer only to discover you’ve got nothing to open it with. While some people experience success using screwdrivers as corkscrews and kitchen cleavers as bottle openers, actual purpose-built tools are far more efficient and safer.
Before you go out and buy new bottle openers, check the kitchen utensils you already own. Some pairs of scissors and can openers have mechanisms for opening bottles. You might even find a corkscrew on a pocket knife.
Plates and Cutlery
Most standard plate and cutlery sets have enough pieces for up to six diners. If you know you’ll be serving more than six people in total, consider purchasing more plates and cutlery. It never hurts to have spares in case of breakages, either.
Opt for white plates that don’t detract from the food, and consider 18/10 cutlery instead of 18/0. Stainless steel 18/10 is more weighted and less prone to rusting. Meanwhile, lower-grade cutlery is lighter, duller, and can often develop rust spots.
Extra Chairs
Having enough chairs can be a common problem that dinner party hosts encounter. While they might have large enough tables, they typically only have enough chairs for their immediate family members. When the time comes to host a dinner party, don’t forget to organize more chairs.
You might borrow some from a friend or family member, hire them from a company, ask people to bring their own or purchase some that you can use for social events in the future. Don’t forget to consider comfort, quality, and weight ratings to ensure they’re suitable for all occasions.
Appropriate Glassware
Source: delicious.com.au
Whether you’re serving wine or martinis, ensure you have the most appropriate glassware for each beverage type being served. You might buy flutes for champagne, wine glasses for wine, and pint glasses for beer. Short whiskey glasses can also be worth having on hand if you’re serving straight spirits on the rocks.
Coffee and Tea Station
Not all guests will be interested in alcoholic beverages or juice served from dispensers. Depending on the type of social event you’re hosting, consider setting up a coffee and tea station. A coffee maker, a tea kettle, and various coffee and tea options paired with mugs can be a nice touch. Such beverages can also be quite popular for winding down an evening.
You don’t require every tool, gadget, and item on the market for entertainment. However, it doesn’t hurt to explore your options to see how you can enhance your hosting experience. Those listed above can be worth adding to your must-have list for your next upcoming party or get-together.
