If you don’t like Turkey, are you still having it tomorrow?

[CheeseWisely]

I don’t actually mind it, although we don’t have it on Christmas Day, but I grew up year after year with Grandparents who’d make the full turkey roast and then comment throughout that it would be so much nicer with lamb / beef. Buy the bloody lamb instead then! It’s not the law to have turkey!

Didn't understand it then, don’t understand it now!

Now the Grandparents are gone DH and I usually have an expansive cheese / meat / pickles board, and my Parents often go to an Indian restaurant near them on Christmas Day. We all eat our favourite treat thing.

Obviously if you’re being hosted and that’s what the hosts genuinely like, or you’re hosting and your guests genuinely like turkey then fair enough but I know of whole families who don’t enjoy it but just unquestioningly do the same thing every year because ‘tradition’.

So if your family don’t like turkey, are you still having it tomorrow? Why? And if you’re not, what do you have instead?

We are doing turkey this year as hosting quite a few people who usually have it (and have bought a mushroom wellington for veggies including myself). But I don’t want to do another roast at all for Christmas in the future. Happy to host, but would rather do something like a curry or pasta dish with a couple of sides that requires less logistics (and food I prefer anyway) rather than having a million things in and out of the oven. We have had those kind of meals for Christmas before and I much prefer it tbh.

We don't want to eat turkey so we have something else every year. We pick something we would normally have for Sunday roast and then try to make a posh version

So chicken becomes a canon
Lamb becomes a crown or a cushion
Pork, well, we just go OTT on the slowness of the cooking, do it on the BBQ overnight

This year we are having rolled sirloin of beef, as rare as possible

We are also having spotted dick instead of Christmas pudding 😃

We've decided to have lamb again which we all love.
DH always wants turkey and harps on about having the left overs sliced & put in a storage box in the fridge "for sandwiches" and some stashed in the freezer to reheat for Sunday lunches but then he never ever wants it and I certainly don't & so it ends up as expensive dog food. This year he finally agreed not to waste the time and money on it and if he really wants turkey he can buy some off the deli counter at the butcher's instead.

Duck

No - pork

We just have chicken with all the trimmings, turkey is fine but too big and too expensive for the 3 of us. We're just not bothered on it.

Turkey and Ham, I don't really like either but every one else does so I don't mind. I just enjoy the cauli cheese, stuffing, PiB and potatoes! When it's just us and the kids for dinner I do chicken.

I love turkey but earlier this year I took DCs to a rescue centre to meet the animals. DS found a turkey and it quite literally had a two way conversation with him. He gobbled at it, it gobbled back. He kept going back to see it and every time he did they had another chat. End of. No more turkey. But I’m a total hypocrite because I’m having chicken instead

We have a leg of lamb and a beef joint. Sometimes we have pork or boar too. I make the beef in red wine in the slow cooker so it’s not traditional either.

We like it and always have it. Only my bil hints that he would prefer steak pie but I make that at new year. I also like ham and sometimes have that too. Other types of roast like chicken and beef we eat most Sundays so it doesn’t feel very special having it on Christmas Day.

Nope. Turkey is awful. Always roast gammon here. Also no mince pies, Christmas cake or Christmas pudding! Dried fruit - yuck! I’m a right Christmas food humbug!

I don't like turkey, so we normally just get a crown as my husband does and the kids. We generally do Beef, Chicken, Pork and Lamb as we have a mixture of who likes what etc. but doing a buffet this year instead so have Beef, Ham, Pork and a Turkey Crown looking forward to not have the Christmas Roast Stress.

Nowadays you can eat 'Christmas dinner' all year long.

Beef or lamb every year. Lamb this year. So much nicer.

We have had family turn down our invitation on the grounds we weren't doing turkey though. Or worse, tell us we need to do tonnes of pigs in blankets for them as they won't be eating the meat.

DH and I love a nice Turkey but the family aren’t so keen. We switched to Fillet Steak a few years ago because that was what my Mum really wanted. Never more than 7 of us so do-able. Cooking 7 steaks to order does introduce a last minute bit of pressure into proceedings but it’s always gone well. They like all the trimmings though so we’re having stuffing, pigs in blankets and chipolatas as well!

DH and I had a small turkey dinner a week ago for ourselves, just roasted the crown and I’ve got the legs in the freezer for a Tandoori Roast thing in the New Year. It was lush!

I prefer duck. But I’m not cooking so we’re having turkey. Cooked by people who would also much prefer duck but have turkey “because it’s Christmas”.

Beef for us this year and sausages for DD.

My friends husband is like this with Christmas pudding ! Nobody actually likes it but he insists they buy one every year 🤣

Never turkey

Definitely not!

I don’t understand why anyone would have turkey if they didn’t like it. I can’t stand the stuff and I’ve only ever had it once at XMIL’s house.

There’s just me and DD here so we have chicken, have had beef a couple of times, which I love, but it’s too expensive really.

So, roast chicken for us tomorrow!

I had a revelation a few years ago that I was spending most of the day cooking a meal I fundamentally didn’t enjoy - haven’t cooked turkey since. We tried beef and lamb before settling on venison as “special enough” for Christmas Day.

We’re having turkey, but I actually do like it. It’s delicious with gravy and cranberry sauce, has a better flavour than chicken and it’s huge so loads of leftovers.

We're having a pigs-in-blankets reel, same as we have the last many years. Neither DS nor I are fussed by turkey, and I cba with doing a full roast. Other Xmas dinners over the years have included spaghetti bolognese, when the boy was little and was fussy over meats. 😂 For us it's about a meal that we all like and will all eat, and time together. I generally only have the traditional turkey dinner at work Xmas parties or if we're at my parents' house.

Chicken and ham. A turkey is too big, too expensive and too dry.

We like chicken but it's not enough meat for a really big meal like Christmas dinner so we do a ham as well and some pigs in blankets.

I don’t like it so I’m not having it. I’m having a fancy chicken instead. On New Year’s Day, I’m going to have a goose leg.