To ask about your alternative Christmas dinners

[FourteenSixteenTwentyTwo]

Every year I do the turkey roast, make too much food, spend most of the day in and out of the kitchen (drinking far too much champagne to keep up the enthusiasm), only to be left with a kitchen full of washing up and more leftovers than will fit in the fridge.

So not this year. I want to do something different. I'm somewhere between picky food and just ordering a curry. What do you do that's different?

Keep the same food but share the workload with your family members and any guests.

I order from a local deli type place where everything is more or less prepped and in trays. So turkey is a crown rather than joint, ham is cooked etc
So no cleaning up and minimal prep. It works for me as we visit family Christmas morning, go out for lunch Christmas eve etc.

Also why are you washing up after cooking ? The cook never cleans

I am planning to do a smoked duck salad for starters. A roast fillet of beef as a main with roast veg and roast potatoes. Dessert will be something premade and pre portioned. Cheese Board for those who want it. Tend to wash pots before serving. Starter and Mains is one load in the dishwasher. Dessert and Cheeseboard and coffee cups in second load.

DP does help, but it just all feels really wasteful. There's only the three of us this year, and DS will only eat the veggies and not the meat.

I like the idea of just buying it all pre-prepped. All my time seems to be spent making a variety of side dishes (which I do like) so buying those makes sense.

M&S veg and meat

We go out for a curry

We let the kids choose.
So far we've had:
spaghetti and tomato sauce
Sausages grilled over an open fire
Meat fondue
Pizza
Spaghetti and meatballs

If there’s three of you why not go for a goose! Wonderfully rich and flavourful meat, no trouble to cook, and you’ll get a load of goose fat to use over the next few months. If you want to make it easy for yourself buy everything else in, pre-done or pre-prepped.

Otherwise I think I’d do a buffet of lovely Christmassy foods.

We do either a simple roast (meat, roast potatoes & parsnips, veg) with nothing extravagant and do it in the evening so we can enjoy the day together or a veggie lasange if we've had a Christmas dinner with my husband's work. If we have a roast we cook the amount of veg and potatoes we'll need for the dinner then use the meat for leftover meals or sandwiches in the following days so we don't have huge amounts of leftovers.

I think we're going to have gammon ham this year with some cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes and peas or red cabbage. Sort of a roast but not so faffy.

Chinese in this house.

@HollyandIvyandAllThingsYule

If there’s three of you why not go for a goose! Wonderfully rich and flavourful meat, no trouble to cook, and you’ll get a load of goose fat to use over the next few months. If you want to make it easy for yourself buy everything else in, pre-done or pre-prepped.

Otherwise I think I’d do a buffet of lovely Christmassy foods.

We love a Christmas goose. We order ours directly from the farmer so we get to go and pick it up and have a lovely drive through the countryside, it's easy to cook, you get goose fat for roast potatoes throughout the year and the leftovers to make an excellent stew.

Our first year in our own house.
Neither kid will eat much of a dinner, and we are not entirely bothered about them. No point faffing around for ages cooking a meal that won't be enjoyed.
Sooo, we've decided on some lovely fillet steak from our butchers, homemade chips, roasted tomatoes, some other vegetable and a sauce.

We'll still have a nice starter and a pudding from M&S

What do you really like?

My DH cooks roast beef or lamb but if it were me cooking, I'd do something like lasagne and home made garlic bread, or a good steak pie. Prep and freeze earlier in the month, just heat through on the day. For us these things are rare enough to be a treat.

Duck or capon with all the trimmings bought from butcher.

We've had a few years where it's just been 3 of us and I would cook a turkey crown then instead of the full turkey.
I love turkey though and it's not Christmas for me without it. We cook ham on Christmas Eve night, and have it hot for supper and cold on the day.
I keep sides to a relative minimum, roast potatoes are essential and we have roast carrots and parsnips with herbs, red cabbage, marrowfat peas (tradition) sage and onion dressing and gravy.

But we also love the left overs! and waste nothing

I might contemplate beef or salmon wellington, or very indulgent seafood - lobster maybe. Or really good fillet steak with bearnaise steak, but realistically to make any of them well it is as much effort if not more in the kitchen so I'll stick with turkey and ham!

I do Finnish style Christmas meal which allows for most to be done beforehand (I cook the potato bake and swede bake the day before and reheat on the day, smoked and salted salmons don't need prep, or the pickled herrings, beetroot salad can be made ahead or avoided altogether because its shit) and the ham/gammon can just be put in the oven until its ready, no need to faff about with anything else except for 10 minutes cutting the fat off the ham and covering it with some mustard/sugar/breadcrumb mix for the last bit of cooking.

Indian takeaway here. 3 under 5s not going to spend my time cooking food that won't get eaten

With only three of you, I’d do steak and chips, with something like a prepared aubergine parmigiana or stuffed peppers for the none meat eater, which you and DH could have portions of a side dish with the steak.
Do a simple starter, smoked salmon & avocado vinaigrette or a medley of mushrooms on salad leaves for instance.
A very merry Christmas for the cook!

Not much clearing up, no leftovers, and only a short time in the kitchen cooking on the day!

We have a bbq and it's absolutely delicious.

We do duck breasts and just a normal amount of veg. I can’t be doing with the overconsumption and martyring that goes on over Christmas dinner.

I've never tried goose, but that's a really good idea. I know we're all a bit fed up with turkey.

I'm also now considering a steak pie. I can make it all the day before and then just need to shove it in the oven.

We've started having our Christmas Dinner on Xmas eve and then leftovers/party food on Xmas day. It means all the hard work is done and then we can just enjoy the day itself, opening presents, snacking and watching TV. It works really well for us.

There are only 3 of us here too.

I still do a turkey because we like it - but only a small one. And no other meats (well, DH may do a small piece of spiced beef on 23/24th and have a cold slice with his turkey).

We prep the veg, make the stuffing etc on 24th. It's a family affair doing the prep in the kitchen with the radio on as we collectively slow down. (Normally, our morning is busy as I have to work so DD comes with me and we meet DH in town for lunch - or else we all go to the Christmas Eve swim in the local sailing club where DD and I swim, DH holds the towels, and we all have a celebratory drink with friends before the club closes for it's winter break).

On the day, we only throw the turkey in the oven about lunchtime - when we get back from church and a couple of extended family visits locally. We spend about half an hour getting the fire lit, a pack of M&S party food cooked, something nice to drink opened and poured etc, then go in and open presents together.

Once we start the main cooking, as all potatoes, veg etc are cooked while turkey rests, I fill the basin with hot, soapy water and throw in the pots as I finish with them - washing them when I have a moment. DH or DD dries if the drainer gets full. Mostly though it's popping in to refill glasses and turn on a pot, then coming back out to refill a glass again and turning off the pot and throwing contents into the oven....

We do turkey, stuffing, gravy, roast potatoes, roasted root veg, (I might do cauliflower cheese), and steamed brussels sprouts.

Our starters are the M&S nibbles we've heated up and then eaten while opening presents (and bowls of crisps and nuts if we need more sustenance).

We have the makings of desert and cheeseboard - which we usually have much later. Desert is pudding that I will steam and flame with brandy. Cheese we will start on 24th and use up over the following days so that it's gone before we go travelling for NY.

Last year, my DPs had a wonderful BBQ steak (due to a disaster with the turkey being left on the counter for 2 days...the utility room was not as cold as DM thought and it turned out the beer fridge was not so important for beer after all!!). Luckily, there were a couple of large steaks in the freezer and all the veg were fine.

DF also loves doing a butterflied leg of lamb on the BBQ even in the depths of winter, and we love doing whole chickens (beer can style) there too.

Actually - forget all that.
What do YOU, DH and DC like to eat?
What would be a special meal for you all?
How can you get everyone involved in the cooking and prepping so that it doesn't all fall on you?
And if you are the person who does all the cooking, then you should definitely NOT be the person who lifts a finger after dinner as DH (and DC) should be doing it all for you.