How do you serve salmon dinner to 2,000 people?

Start well in advance, but wait to the last minute to get your fish.

Deana Stout started weeks ago, calling friends and family members for dibs on their rhubarb patches. She needed 160 cups of rhubarb for 21 sheet cakes needed for the 9th Annual Haines Fishermen’s Community Free King Salmon Barbecue.

“There are a couple other places I could hit, but I do know where they all are now,” Stout said this week, cooking cakes in the fair’s three convection ovens.

A local caterer, Stout is working for the state fair, overseeing preparation of everything but the fish for Saturday’s big meal that may feed a crowd nearly as big as the town’s population.

She cooked for the first barbecue nine years ago, handling most of it herself. The event grew to 1,500 dinners last year, with another 500 expected this year with the official addition of bicyclists from the Kluane-Chilkat International Bike Relay.

“We’ve bumped it up a little this year. It’s going to be quite the adventure, I have to say, but I love it,” said Stout, whose introduction to food service started with providing “craft service” or snacks, on the movie sets of “White Fang” in Haines in 1989.

Stout arranged to have giant ice chests like those used on long-distance river trips to hold 96 chopped heads of Romaine lettuce she’ll use to make up to 2,000 servings of Caesar salad. She borrowed a food trailer from the local softball association to use as a “beanie wagon” to serve 400 pounds of hot baked beans.

The wagon means servers won’t have to carry piping hot pots of beans from the fair’s kitchen to Dalton City serving stations, a precarious task, she said.

“Most of the logistics involve keeping hot foods hot and cold foods cold,” she said.

With cakes in the freezer in a few days, the fair’s refrigerators will be reserved for about 500 pounds of cooked potatoes for potato salad. The salad is a vegan recipe, using green onions, parsley, lemon juice and potato water.

“We like to make it so everybody can eat everything, although that’s hard to do with desserts for this many people, Stout said.

More than a ton of king salmon will be harvested for Saturday’s meal. Fisherman Gregg Bigsby said 152 kings, averaging 15 pounds each whole, will come north after they’re dressed, iced and boxed in Sitka.

About half those fish were still being caught Wednesday. Bigsby said while seafood producers donate the freshest kings possible for the feed, difficulty getting fish this year means they’ll be especially fresh. “These are fresh and in good condition.”

“Alaska Airlines ships them to Juneau for free as a donation to the fair, and Alaska Seaplanes donates half the freight. We’re expecting them by late Thursday. It’s a matter of coordinating all this stuff,” Bigsby said.

State fair executive director Jessica Edwards has experience in mass food service. She worked for a restaurant in Bellingham, Wash. that catered events serving five-course plated dinners to groups even bigger than the crowd expected Saturday.

Banquets bring their own energy, Edwards said. “We have 15 gallons of salad dressing. We have gallons of lemon juice. The quantities of this are almost unappetizing. You start to cook the food, and you say, ‘Oh, wow.’ You just get giddy.”

At least the cooking of the beans shouldn’t be complicated. Stout said for that, she’ll just open a can – or 55, No. 10 cans, actually. “People like those beans,” Stout said.

The barbecue started nine years ago with a state grant for a special event that would promote seafood, like celebrations of the first Copper River king salmon of the season held annually in Seattle.

“We were looking for an event and throwing ideas around and someone said, ‘Let’s buy some salmon and throw a party,’” Bigsby said. “It was so popular, that Hugh Rietze and Ocean Beauty decided they’d pay for the salmon.”

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