What do you eat on Christmas Eve?

[TinkyDinks]

I really want to have a meal which becomes our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. I don't really want anything too "meat and veggie" cause of the big Christmas Dinner. Nothing too spicy either as 3 young children who aren't keen.

We normally go to church for an hour ish at about 4pm and stop at pub on way home, just for one.

Really want a "go to" for Christmas Eve meal. What do you have?

Children's mass at 6pm then Indian restaurant

We have lovely, thick ham from the butchers with a fried egg and home made chips. It's lovely, and not too heavy

Baked gammon joint, roast potatoes, broad beans in parsley sauce, baked chantenay carrots, mince pies and boozy cream x

We always have kedgeree, my DC loved it from children, I used
to do it on Christmas Morning but it took too much time with
opening presents etc. It's different from the other Christmas food
too, so we now have it after church on Christmas Eve.

We go to a carol concert with friends at 6.30 on Christmas Eve so we meet up at their house at 5.30 for Chili and Jacket Potatoes and if we're peckish later on, we'll have smoked salmon and brown bread.

I'm off my food at the minute, but DH bought Morrisons Fish Pie for dinner tonight....it is beyond lovely and I doubt I could do one as tasty. I can highly recommend it!

We normally have buffet-type nibbles. This year I'm doing slimming world and DP might be working until 9:30 so I'm not sure what will happen this year.

We always go for a curry...have done since the year we tried evicting DS1 with a curry...tears were running down my face it was so hot. It didn't work. Which is probably a good think or he'd have his birthday on Christmas Day. Also, I don't want to wash up on Christmas Eve.

Only me for Xmas Eve, so I will take myself into London and gave a lovely late lunch around Spitalfields with much wine. Then home for cheese and biscuits.
Bliss.

We do Mexican Christmas Eve, with black beans, avocado, chicken cooked in tomato sauce, wraps etc, then churros for pudding. Done it the last few years now, hoping it becomes a tradition

We go to my mums. She does turkey schnitzel, as everyone comes to ours for a massive gammon on Xmas day.

My mum makes the best schnitzel in all the meats, the turkey is so succulent too. She'll make a curried rice too.

We roast a piece of beef, cook butchers sausages and bake bread.

Dinner is always hot sandwiches, mince pies and some sort of cake.

My mum started this tradition more than 50 years ago, Christmas Eve always involved her feeding half of the village, lovely memories and even if I am not at home I (well we all do) carry it on.

We always have lentil soup (with bacon on top and naice bread and butter).

I quite like the basic/unpretentious nature of it, especially compared to the feasting on Christmas Day.

To make it I just:

• Fry some finely chopped onion in butter until it's translucent
• Add a couple of handfuls of red lentils
• Throw in some chopped celery
• Add a pint or so of vegetable stock
• Simmer until it looks like soup
• Add a couple of table spoons of milk
• Blitz it a bit with a stick-blender

You can add whatever dried/ fresh herbs you fancy (a bay leaf, a couple of sage leaves etc.) then sprinkle some freshly cooked bacon/pancetta to serve.

We have a lots of picnic/buffet food, all shop bought very little effort, there's only me and DD so we end up with lots of lovely bits in the fridge to pick at over Christmas.

We either have takeaway or buffet style nibbles in front of a xmas film on the telly.. i do the cooking on xmas day so deffo don't want to be cooking a big meal on xmas eve too x

We usually have a chinese but we're entertaining this year so we're having turkey, ham, nibbly bits and salad, etc.

Hot roast beef sandwiches followed by mince pies.

Not much effort or washing up and you can feed as many people as you need with it.

Fish pie but with puff pastry not potato.

Although now I've read about macaroni cheese I'm really tempted to make a change this year!

Friends always do their Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, then have giant baking trays full of party food on Christmas Day; means they can relax and enjoy playing with presents etc. I like that plan too.

Woah! Did not expect this many replies! All brilliant thank you, am going to wade through them now. Won't be fish though as me and DH hate the stuff!

Ah. Just seen no fish. We always have a pesto salmon en croute with new potatoes, but guessing that wouldn't appeal!

We always have a cheese fondue. It's really quick and easy to prepare, especially if you use the packs you can buy in the supermarket (which they use regularly in proper fondue eating countries, so I never feel like we're cheating). Bread, veg etc can be prepped ahead of time and then all you need to do is melt the cheese when you're ready.

As a child we had big t bone steaks and chips, with the odd mushroom or spoonful of peas/pickled onions for those who wanted them! For years we couldn't get T bones so just had steaks (beef crisis) but now we're back to the T bones!! Big meat eaters here!! Major treat for Xmas Eve - and steak pie for New Year's Day!

We have gammon, red cabbage and mashed potato, cook the red cabbage in the gammon juice.

I'm so stealing the hot sandwich idea, why an earth didn't I think of that one

Picnic tea, sandwiches crisps pretzels cheese pickles pickled onions etc. in the living room, the only time we don't eat at the table for a meal!

My house growing up was duck with a kind of sweet rice, it had pine nuts and apricots in it.

Although now DH and I have the traditional Norwegian pinnekjøtt (a salted cured lamb, slow-cooked and served with puréed swede and potatoes, akevitt on the side) on Christmas Eve, then a traditional British Christmas meal the next day. You've got to do a lot of "brisk Christmas walking" to work all that off!