On the nose is another memorable date, but you still can’t even imagine what dishes can be prepared? On a birthday or any other holiday, many housewives face such a problem. This is understandable, because you want to set the table so that loved ones are satisfied with the treats, and it did not take so much time.
Well, in fact, the complexity of the question of what to cook for a birthday is greatly exaggerated. The main thing in this business is to think over everything in advance.
The main principles of the holiday menu
When making a list of what to cook for your birthday, you should not reinvent the wheel - it is better to use the old and proven formula:
- 1 hotter;
- 2-3 salads;
- 2-3 snacks;
- meat and cheese cutting.
This number of dishes is enough to make the table look quite presentable.
How to choose the right dishes for the holiday
Meat or poultry in any form (fried, stewed, baked) and a side dish can be served as a second for hot. It’s best for a birthday.
As for salads, it is important not to overdo it - two or three varieties will be enough. You should not cook more, your guests can hardly eat such an amount of food (after all, even hotter dessert is provided), and it will be a pity to throw out spoiled foods.
When choosing salads for birthday recipes, you should look for the most diverse. So, one salad can be layered, the other - light vegetable and so on.
Birthday snacks are another dish worth including on the holiday menu. This category includes mini-sandwiches, canapes, tartlets, meat and vegetable rolls, jellied meat and much more. Many housewives for some reason neglect such recipes and are completely in vain. It is the appetizers that can truly decorate any banquet table and act as a very tasty and quite satisfying dish. And besides, time for preparing snacks will not be required so much.
Pineapple Chicken
The main meat dish can be chicken with pineapple. The combination of sweet fruit and meat may surprise someone, but it is pineapple that gives the meat a touch of piquancy. As for the appearance of this dish, it asks for a festive table for a birthday.
What will be needed for cooking:
- chicken fillet - 2 or 3 pieces (it depends on the size of the slices);
- raw chicken eggs - 2-3 pcs.;
- flour - about 100 g (flour will be needed to dip the meat pieces);
- pineapples in circles - 10-12 pieces (according to the number of servings);
- hard cheese - 200-250 g;
- vegetable oil - a small amount for frying;
- salt pepper.
To begin with, the chicken is washed thoroughly and lightly dried with a paper towel. After that, it is cut lengthwise into several parts. Layers should be 1.5-2 cm thick. Each layer is slightly beaten with a meat hammer.
Prepared cues are lightly salted and peppered. In this state, the meat should remain for about half an hour. During this time, it will salt well and will be ready for further processing.
The next step is to roll the fillet in flour, and then in beaten eggs. As soon as the chop is taken out of the egg mixture, it is immediately sent to a preheated pan with a small amount of oil and fried until a golden hue begins to appear. So do with all the pieces of meat.
After all the cues are ready, they are placed on a baking sheet, which is greased with a small amount of oil. It is advisable to lay so that between the pieces of fillet there is little space. A circle of pineapple is placed on each slice and a little grated cheese is placed on top.
Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes at a temperature of no more than 180 degrees. Less time may be required, so you need to monitor the condition of the cheese. As soon as the cheese melts and turns into a golden crust, the fillet can be removed.
Absolutely any side dish is suitable for such a dish, so you can cook mashed potatoes, rice, fries for your birthday.
Festive cabbage rolls
Fragrant rosy stuffed cabbage with gravy on the festive table will be very welcome. This dish goes well with any kind of side dish, and at the same time it can become an independent option of hot - it is quite satisfying, incredibly tasty and quite original (after all, not every housewife will cook stuffed cabbage in the middle of the week).
This recipe involves cooking stuffed cabbage in the oven. Thanks to this method, it turns out especially juicy and rosy hot on the second. At the birthday party, guests will certainly appreciate it.
Ingredients:
- minced meat - 0.5 kg (you can take pork, beef or mixed);
- cabbage - 1 medium swing (should not be taken too large, since the leaves will be uncomfortable to fold);
- onions - 2 large or 3 small heads;
- carrots - 1 pc. large;
- rice - about 0.5 cups;
- tomato paste - 1-2 tbsp. l .;
- high fat sour cream - 100 g;
- salt and pepper - about a pinch (to your taste);
- garlic - 2-3 cloves;
- sunflower oil - a few tablespoons;
- water - 50-70 ml.
The process of preparing cabbage rolls is quite lengthy, so it’s worthwhile to prepare them for your birthday.
- Head of cabbage is carefully sorted into separate leaves. It is most convenient to do this as follows. At a head of cabbage, the stump is cut and the upper leaves are cut at the base. A knife or fork with 2 teeth is thrust into the base (it is convenient to pull the cabbage out by the handle). Dip the head into a pot of boiling water. After a couple of minutes, the upper leaves peel off easily. They are removed and the procedure repeated. There should be about 20 of them.
- At the same time, you can boil rice in slightly salted water until half ready.
- Finely chop the onion, fry in oil and mix with rice and minced meat, salt. Add a little water to the minced meat, as the mixture should turn out to be quite soft.
- The next stage is the assembly of cabbage rolls. To do this, cut a thick vein from a cabbage leaf, lay a spoon of minced meat on a leaf (a little closer to the base). If the sheet is large enough, you can add a little more mince. Now the base of the sheet is folded onto the stuffing, the sides of the sheet are folded. The rest is twisted.
- Carrots are cut into circles and fried in vegetable oil.
- Stuffed cabbage on both sides should also be fried in a pan.
- Now prepare the sauce. To do this, mix sour cream, tomato paste, chopped garlic and water.
- Stuffed cabbage is placed in a baking sheet. The space between them is shifted by fried carrots. Sprinkle sauce over evenly and cover with foil.
- Cabbage rolls are prepared for 30-40 minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees, then the foil is removed and cooked for about 20 minutes.
Immediately from the oven, the dish can be served on the festive table. For a birthday, this recipe is perfect.
Mushroom Glade Salad
Salad with pickled mushrooms? Why not! It is incredibly tasty and satisfying, in addition, it takes very little time to prepare such a simple salad for a birthday. Mistresses will certainly appreciate the “Mushroom meadow”.
It will require the following products:
- meat (beef) - about 400 g;
- pickled mushrooms - 200 g;
- hard cheese - 300 g;
- dressing mayonnaise;
- salt;
- greens.
Begin cooking with boiling meat. At this time, you can do the preparation of other ingredients.
Finely chop the mushrooms (approximately ⅓ must be left intact for decoration). Cheese grated, chopped herbs. The cooled meat is cut into small cubes.
You need to collect the salad like this. The bottom and walls of a deep bowl are lined with foil. Whole mushrooms are laid down to the very bottom with their hats down, and chopped greens are poured over the mushrooms. All other ingredients are laid out in layers and smeared with mayonnaise. At the end, the bowl is turned onto a flat dish and the film is removed.
Salad "Jumble"
If you need a recipe for the simplest salad for your birthday, then Jumble is perfect. It will take only half an hour to cook it, but this bright dish will become a real decoration of the table. It will appeal to both children and adults.
What products are needed for this:
- cooked sausage - about 200 g;
- canned green peas - 1 cup;
- boiled carrots - 2 pcs.;
- boiled beets - 1 pc. (large);
- French fries or chips - 400 g;
- greens - for decoration;
- mayonnaise.
Carrots and beets are grated, the sausage is cut into thin sticks. All ingredients are laid out on a large flat dish with slides. Lay out a small amount of mayonnaise in the center and decorate with greens. Mix "Jumble" you need already on the table.
Shrimp Cocktail Salad
Not sure what else to put on the table for your birthday? The recipe for a portioned salad will be a lifesaver for any housewife. Prawns decorated with shrimp look truly presentable on the banquet table, and the taste will surely captivate all guests.
What you need for a salad:
- peeled shrimp - 200 g;
- pickled cucumbers - 2 pcs. (large);
- boiled eggs - 3 pcs.;
- cheese of any hard variety - 100 g;
- canned pineapples - about half of the can.
Finely chopped cucumbers are placed on the bottom of the bowl, which is greased with mayonnaise on top.
2nd layer - finely chopped pineapples, smeared with mayonnaise.
3rd layer - boiled shrimp with mayonnaise.
4th layer - grated eggs with mayonnaise.
5th layer - grated cheese.
You can decorate the salad with a whole shrimp and a sprig of greens.
Birthday snacks
If you've never prepared canapes before, it's time to start. Canapes are tiny skewer sandwiches that can be eaten in one bite. There are dozens of canapé recipes, so from the proposed options the housewives can safely choose what to cook for their birthday.
The list of the most popular canapé recipes includes:
- ham, hard cheese, pickles;
- brown bread, cream cheese, half a quail egg, pieces of herring;
- salami, cheese, fresh cucumber, olives;
- black and green grapes, banana, kiwi, mandarin, watermelon.
Liver cake
Even if you have already decided what to cook for your birthday, the menu will always find a place for a terrific liver cake. This appetizer looks very original, and its cost will be affordable for everyone.
For cooking, you need to stock up on the following products. For liver pancakes you need:
- beef or chicken liver - about 0.5 kg;
- flour - 3 tbsp. l .;
- eggs - 3 pcs.;
- vegetable oil - 2 or 3 tablespoons;
- milk - 1 cup.
For the filling you need:
- carrots - 300 g;
- onions - 200 g;
- sour cream - 250 g;
- vegetable oil;
- garlic - 3 cloves;
- salt and a little pepper.
The liver is crushed in a blender, milk, butter, flour and eggs are added to it, salt and pepper. This mixture is again whipped with a blender to make a dough that resembles sour cream in consistency.
From this test, pancakes are baked in a pan (this process is similar to baking ordinary pancakes).
When the pancakes are ready, you can do the filling. To do this, fry carrots and finely chopped onions in a frying pan with butter. After the appearance of a golden hue, the pan is covered and the vegetables are stewed until soft. In addition, you will need sour cream sauce (sour cream, dill and garlic).
A liver pancake is placed on a flat dish, greased with a spoon of sauce and covered with stewed vegetables. This is repeated with all the pancakes.
Meat cuts
Sliced meat is a very important dish on the festive table. Properly assembled, it can become a completely independent snack and a luxurious decoration. In this case, meat products are cut into thin slices and nicely placed on large flat dishes.
What can be used in slicing? In fact, any meat and sausage products should be used here: smoked and boiled sausage, basturma, balyk, smoked meat, pork ham, lard with a meat layer, tongue, meatloaf and other delicacies.
Cheese cutting
As is the case with cold cuts, a cheese plate is an excellent dish for a birthday table. What delicious to cook for such a cut? The main rule is that at least 5 types of cheese should be present on the plate, and it is better to choose varieties with a delicate creamy taste, as well as more savory ones.
You can cut cheese in different ways: thin slices or cubes (in this case, you need to serve cheese on skewers).
Of course, this holiday menu is just an example of how you can arrange a birthday feast, but it can be a good basis.