Appetizers or Starter Ideas for Dinner Parties

A dinner party is a fun event that you enjoy with your family, friends or office colleagues. It is a time to eat, drink and be merry; a time to forget all worries and have some good time together. Dinner party is about food and having the best food for the party is one of your prime concerns while planning a dinner party. Whether you prepare it all by yourself or hire a professional catering service for the job, it is important to make sure that the food is of great quality and has all the ingredients of a good meal course. Let’s see some of the best appetizer ideas for dinner parties.

Whetting the Appetite

A dinner party begins with the appetizers to whet the appetite of those present for the party. It is important that the appetizers are light and easy to consume and digest so that they only ignite the hunger for the main course and not satiate it. The appetizers should be tasty and interesting. There are many starter recipe ideas you can use for a dinner party. There are hot starter recipes and cold starter recipes. You might like to serve non-veg food like meat or fish for appetizer or use some kind of vegetarian starters.

Blending the Starter with Main Course

While serving the starter food, it is important to make sure that you do not serve the same food that will be served for the main course. It should be something different and yet something that will compliment the main course. For instance, if you are planning to serve a chicken dish for the main course, you can serve some fried sea-food such as prawns as an appetizer. In the same manner for a vegetarian only dinner party, a vegetarian starter is the obvious choice. Keeping it different from the main course, something that will comfortably lead your guests to the main course is important.

Soups and Salads

One of the most popular and common starter is Soup. There are various kinds of soups you can choose from. Soups can be prepared in various ways using different ingredients. Soups can be made from non-veg ingredients such as chicken or they can be vegetarian. They can also be prepared hot, warm or cold. Salads are great starters too and are wonderful for health. Both of these are light and easy on the stomach. They are very easy to make at home and you can easily learn the recipe from any good cookbook. There is plenty of room for experimentation to come up with your own starter recipe. Just plan the experiment a few days ahead of the main event. 🙂

Other Great Starters

Garlic bread is a wonderful starter you can easily make at home. Fry some crushed garlic in oil and spread it over pieces of bread. You may add some parsley to it. Grill it till golden brown and serve it as a starter. Another one is to wrap bacon around chunks of banana or dates or even prawns and then deep fry them till it becomes golden brown. You can grill them if you want. They are crisp, smell wonderful and are a great appetizer for a non-vegetarian dinner party.

Look forward to your starter ideas too… even experimental ones ! 🙂