cooking red beans and sausage for 100

I did some experimenting around for a possible red beans and rice calculator and came up with these amounts:

Red Beans Yields

Soak:
1 lb beans
8 cups water
1 1/2 Tbs salt

After Soak you'll have:
5 cups water
6 cups soaked beans

Drain the water and rinse the beans very well.

To cook
6 cups soaked & rinsed beans
8 cups water (will cover beans by about 1 inch)
3/4 lbs sausage

Yield:
8 cups red beans and sausage
That's 1/2 a gallon of cooked beans per pound dry

Rice for beans:
2 cups raw or 6 cups cooked

To serve
Use 1/2 cup rice for 3/4 cup red beans

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also splitting it up into two 18 qt roasters. should that be enough space?

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Yep, those 2 pots should give you just enough capacity. It's a gallon of cooked beans for every 2 pounds of dry beans. You'll have 36 quarts of pot space and 32 quarts of beans using the recipe you linked.

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Thanks, Rat!

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You know, now that I looked at that recipe again, he uses a lot of meat. He is using 2 1/2 pounds of meat per lb of beans - I only used 3/4 lb in my experiment. By my estimates, you'll be just overtopping the brim of those 2 roasters if you used all that meat. To be safe, you might want to reduce the meat that goes in the pot and cook some sausage or pork chops separately.

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You must have done great with word problems in math class.

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Yes, I was good at math. I usually didn't do my homework. The teacher would call random students up to the board to show their work on selected problems. I would have to work out the problem on the spot. Only time I got burned was when I was first.

My dad had his own engineering firm and my 2 oldest brothers worked for him when I was a kid. Engineers are extremely adept at estimating things very quickly. Business talk frequently spilled over into family time and I picked up some skill from that, I guess.