To Ask For Your Christmas Dinner Shortcuts?

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I'm cooking this year, for 6 people (all adults, no children). I've never cooked Christmas lunch before, and I know it's basically a fancy Sunday lunch, but I've not cooked one of those for donkeys years either .

Please share your Christmas dinner shortcuts! Thank you!

Aldi four bird roast. Absolute piece of cake to cook, no fiddly carving, very little waste.

Frozen roasties. Steamed veggies. Supplement gravy juices with oxo cubes.

Easy peasy to cook. Just take it out of the freezer and bung it in the oven. Follow instructions and bobs your uncle.

I can par boil my veg the day before?. Does it really work? That would cut my Christmas day faffing time in half if it does!

This is all great advice - I'm also doing this for the first time so thank you!

How do you handle having a very small oven? I assume I will have to cook some things beforehand but what order? (We don't eat meat so at least the turkey isn't a problem!)

I was watching Jamie cook Xmas dinner last night and he parboiled his roasties the night before drained them, put them on the tray with oil ready to go in the oven. Has anyone done this? Do they not go black and manky?

I do Christmas for 16. Peel and prep all the veggies the day before (though I don't parboil till the day, I buy ready made bread sauce, cranberry sauce and gravy (I add to the latter). I don't find it that hard but I do have 3 ovens!

I guess if you coat them properly they don’t?

Pre-prepped veg is expensive, but if you’re going to splash out, do it on the sprouts. As a PP mentioned, they’re by far the fiddliest bit.

Make your mash first thing and microwave it just before serving. It’s one of the few elements that taste just as good reheated and will give you back a) time and b) a much needed ring on the hob.

I haven’t tried this myself, but if you have a slow cooker, you can do the Christmas pudding in it - my mother swears by it (and it certainly tastes great).

Buy a few things that are prepared and just need sticking in the oven. Last year I bought red cabbage, swede and carrot mash and yorkshire puddings.

Mash with a Christmas dinner??

Agree with those saying get the turkey out early. Cover with foil and then put a towel over the top, will stay hot for ages.

Mash with a Christmas dinner??

🙄 What’s the problem? If you don’t like it, don’t make it. That’s the ultimate time saver.

Turkey is better well rested so I agree get it in as early as possible then leave it covered while you sort everything else. It'll be fine.

If you don't buy ready made, make stuffing and pigs in blankets in advance and freeze.

If finances allow, buy as much ready made or pre prepped as possible.

Don't provide a mass of side dishes. Unless you have loads of oven and hob space, or e.g. a Hostess trolley, having everything ready on time still hot, and not soggy, will be a major PITA.

Best tip, though, is to work out timings backwards, starting from when you want to sit down to eat, including everything e.g. first turning the oven on for the roast, putting spuds on to parboil.

Then write it all out again in time order and stick it on the front of the fridge, or anywhere else it won't get lost or buried under kitchen debris - - and make sure you don't have so much Bucks Fizz/whatever that you forget to refer to it.

Oh, and a late dinner, not before 3, and 5 pm is better, is infinitely more civilised than 1 pm, when many people just won't be ready for it, never mind the morning being a major rush in the kitchen.

If having it later, don't bother with a starter. Nice canapés an hour or so before, works fine.

If you have a small oven, buy an electric warming tray thingy. Then pre cook as much as possible the day before. On the day get the turkey in so its cooked an hour before you want to eat. Then when you take it out, whack the heat up on the oven and put the roast potatoes in, when they are three quarters done, take them out for 20 mins while you reheat/finish the stuffing and any other things that need the oven (keep the potato trays on the warming tray. Then potatoes back in, everything else on the warming tray, heat your plates in the microwave, carve the turkey (which has been resting covered in foil and several tea towels) and Bobs your Uncle. The potatoes have to be served immediately as otherwise they loose that lovely crispness.

Write out a time table the day before based on the weight of your turkey. Dont forget to allow time to preheat the oven, par boil potatoes, melt duck fat etc. write out each step.
Find a serving dish and utensils for each food and write the food name on a scrap of paper and put it in the bowl. The last minute flurry is much easier if everything is written down (and other people can help more easily)
Use tin foil trays inside your baking trays. Clean up is soo much easier. Have a bin bag at the ready. Dont use tin foil trays on their own, they will collapse at a crucial point and dump your food on the floor 😂

I've already made the veg for Xmas Day and frozen it. Nobody likes sprouts in my house, so I cook a mixture of shredded red cabbage, apple, onion, clove, cinnamon, cider vinegar, red wine and muscovado sugar, then bag it and freeze. It defrosts on Christmas morning and heats up in the microwave, to make a colourful (deep purple) display on the plate. Tastes lovely too.
I make two different turkey stuffings on Christmas Eve and refrigerate them.
On Christmas Day, the turkey goes in a low oven, foil wrapped, to gently steam, and we all go out for a long walk round the local loch and admire the view of the snow capped mountains in the distance. Nobody slaves over an oven! When we come home we stick the potatoes on and have a drink and play a board game while they cook. The turkey oven is turned up to crisp the skin.
When it's ready, we all pile into the kitchen to carve, make gravy from the roast juices, and serve.
Christmas should be fun, not a kitchen marathon. A roast is ideal, because you bung it in and ignore it while it cooks itself.

Yes to Christmas Pud in slo cooker. 1/3 full of water on low for 4/5 hours. I put it on in the utility room and just leave it. We've done it like this for years. Always perfect.

Once I forgot about it and 10 hours later pud was still great😁

Make gravy before and freeze.

Remember to put the foil trays into pans! Too weak and floppy on their own.

Work out the timings before, write it down and stick it on the fridge. So even if you're a couple of sherries in or some other chaos you can look at that and pull it back. Don't keep it in your head however obvious it is to you.

I make puds the night before.

I have a spreadsheet for all the Xmas food, and pre-prep as much as possible. Instead of using foil trays, I line my roasting tins with greaseproof paper. You still have to wash the trays, but it's much easier as nothing will have stuck to them. I use the oil-covered paper as a firelighter. My best tip is to have your dinner on Xmas eve so you don't spend the whole of Xmas day cooking while everyone else has present-unwrapping fun.

If you are using a foil turkey tray with a biggish turkey, take it out of the oven with the whole oven tray! Or put the thing onto a big baking tray.
Foil turkey trays are not as supportive as you think and cleaning turkey fat off the kitchen floor on Christmas Day is not a fun job. I speak from experience.

But definitely yes to prepping all the veggies the afternoon/evening before. When I was a child, my siblings and I used to do it whilst watching 9 lessons and Carols from Kings. When my own children were young, we did the same. Once they were teens, I used to leave them to it while I had a glass of wine. They even stuffed the turkey for me!

Oh and the biggest tip of all - don't feel you HAVE to have the standard Christmas Dinner Extras eg bread sauce, cranberry sauce, brussels etc if no one likes them or is going to eat them. Just cook what you like and the amount you would normally eat. Bubble and squeak with turkey on Boxing Day or the day after is NOT compulsory (but very very yummy )

I make my own yorkshire puddings in advance and freeze. Only take a few minutes from frozen to table.

Pat-boil sprouts the day before and bung in fridge. Then get them out and slice each in half. Fry them in some chilli oil with some bacon lardons. Takes just a couple of minutes and tastes much better than normal.
Easiest alternative to Christmas pud is a marshmallow chocolate mousse. Melt dark choc and mini marshmallows in microwave (30 seconds at a time, stirring). Separately whisk some double cream. Fold together and job done.

Work out the timings for the turkey before the day. No point getting to 9am and realising the turkey should have gone in at 8.

The turkey can come out an hour before you eat to 'rest' leaving the oven free for other stuff.

Don't do more than you can handle. My Christmas lunches have got more complicated over the years as I have got more confident, cut down on the extras, it is meant to be a nice day for you too.

Definitely write a list of what needs to be done when and have a buzzer that you have near you so you are reminded as time flies by when guests are there and you're serving drinks and opening gifts etc.

We cook the turkey early so it's out with a good hour to go so there's room for everything else in the oven (and we have two ovens so a must for those with one). We cover with foil and towels to keep warm and it really makes it moist and tasty. I make stuffing balls and slightly squish them and pan fry them but I have a 5 hobbed top so do have space. Also steamers are a great space saver if hob space an issue.

One tip we used last year which really worked was putting the spare gravy in a thermos flask and having that in the dining room so it's easier to top up the gravy boat. Kept it beautifully warm and we'll be doing it again 😀

We don't do starters but have cava / Prosecco with some smoked salmon blinis around noon in the lounge then do the big event 1/1.30pm.

We also serve up in the kitchen with all of us queuing to help ourselves then once at the table help ourselves to gravy, cranberry sauce and bread sauce etc and by then we are all sitting down so can start altogether. Our table isn't tiny but once cutlery, napkins, wine glasses and water glasses and cruet etc is on there plus a pretty table piece / candles etc there isn't room for big tureens of food. We have a warming pad on our oven hob so can keep extras warm if needed.

6 is a lovely amount of people for doing your first Christmas and do delegate as well as no one minds. My Fil insists on washing up (we don't have a dishwasher) and we do dessert once we have cleared the main course and everyone has made a bit of room.

Don't be over-ambitious - only cook the sides people actually want. In my house only my mum will touch sprouts, and I'm not doing four sprouts for her so they don't happen. Frozen peas. I prep parsnips and freeze, but don't parboil until the day. I also shape stuffing balls in advance.

Actually nowadays I don't do anything in advance, because I have enough pans and oven space and flexible time that I can do the lot on the morning of the 25th, with Classic FM carols on top volume and kids popping in and out to show me what's in their stockings.