Cold Starter Recipes For a Dinner Party

Cold starter recipes are very popular, especially if you are serving a hot main course, since you will get the temperature contrast as well as a flavour contrast. There are so many different starter recipes you can choose from if you want to make something chilled.

Classic starters include prawn cocktail, parma ham with melon or even an easy chicken salad recipe. If you are catering for a buffet, you will want to make different cold starters than if you were, for example, hosting a dinner party. With a dinner party, everybody gets their own plate and with a buffet people help themselves from big platters.

Examples of Easy Starter Recipes

If you only want to use a few ingredients, what about making a classic starter recipe – something that everybody knows and loves? You can even go retro with this one and make a prawn cocktail. All you will need for a basic one is some iceberg lettuce, prawns, marie rose sauce, cucumber slices and a sprinkling of paprika.

Another good one would be a chilled soup. Have you ever tried chilled soup recipes? They are great because you can make this in advance, then leave it in the fridge while you work on the main course.

Gazpacho is a typical chilled Spanish soup, made with tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumber, olive oil and more. Then there are chilled fruit soups like strawberry soup or melon soup. These are unusual but really easy to make, even if you are a bit of a novice in the kitchen.

Starters in a Hurry

Do you only have a few minutes to put your cold starter recipes together? You can make devils on horseback with chicken livers, bacon and toast, or what about parma ham draped over a slice of melon? This takes less than two minutes to make!

If you are really in a rush or your planned starters have gone wrong, try a Mediterranean platter. Simply arrange some cubes of cheese, olives and cold meats on a big platter and let people help themselves. Salami and chorizo work well and you can have black olives, green ones and maybe stuffed ones too.

Starter recipes are supposed to whet the appetite and get people in the mood for the main course, so do not worry too much about making something elaborate. Choose an easy starter recipe and you will not go wrong.