re: How many lbs of shrimp to boil for 100 people?

quote:

---

Wedding shower 50/50 men/women. I dont want to run out. Headless is dumb but that is what they want. Serving potatoes/corn.

---

It's a shower, so it's not going to be a shrimp boil marathon. There will be opening of gifts and when that starts, most will stop eating unless you're doing that in reverse order. Most of the women will not eat a pound. I can eat almost a pound of headless shrimp if I don't eat the sides. Most, if not all, of the women will not be stuffing themselves. The men might eat a pound with sides.

If you have 100#, you won't run out. You'll have leftovers. You would probably be fine with 75#. Anything over a pound per person is overkill, particularly for headless shrimp. A few may eat more than a pound, but I'd be shocked if any woman there ate a pound. Put out some dips, spreads, cheeses and crackers as well. Grill or boil some sausage. You could have a person or two with a seafood allergy who will eat no shrimp.

Are these folks going to be pretty casually dressed? If not, woman aren't going to be too interested in shrimp juices spraying on their cute clothing. Depending on dress, you might want to consider the plastic bibs or just having some around in case. I always put out the containers of wet wipes, too, so there isn't a stampede to the sinks for hand washing. 3 or 4 of those plastic containers are cheap or buy the little packets of them from Sam's in the big container. I keep the extras in my car.

For those who ask this question in the future, it would be really nice if you would report back after the soiree on how many pounds you ordered, how many were eaten, how many showed up, what else was served and whether that was eaten. People ask these questions a lot and don't report back. Reports would be excellent and helpful.