Christmas Food when you’re not cooking the ‘main’ event

[Bungle2]

Hi,

We always go to the MILs house for Christmas lunch which is great as it means I can enjoy the day with the children rather than being in the kitchen. However I miss the leftovers on Boxing Day 😔 is it worth cooking a small turkey just for this? What do other people do?

I cook 3 meats for Christmas whether or not we're eating the main event at home (I know it seems excessive but there's literally never any waste). Last year we ate at my DMs and I still had turkey (a small one), hog roast and Ham at home. We used them for another Christmas Dinner on boxing day, sandwiches, pies, curries, with chips, for cold platters, salads, with cheese board, soup etc. Obviously we had people in and out on previous Christmases to help us eat them so this year we're still buying 3 meats (turkey, ham and chicken this year) but we'll freeze one of the meats for when we run out of the other two.

We have a buffet of sorts, we get the picky bits from M&S.

If your MiL doesn’t especially like turkey or has a particularly big one, she might be only too glad to give you some leftovers to take home.

I did once buy a small frozen turkey to cook on about the 28th, since we were going to stay with friends where I knew there wasn’t going to be any trad Christmas dinner. I cooked a piece of gammon before we went, too.
No leftovers is the main reason I’d never want to eat out on Christmas Day - apart from the facts of it being bloody expensive and almost certainly not as nice as I can make at home.

I love the post-Christmas cold turkey/ham/pigs in blankets - and I positively enjoy making a big turkey stew with stock from the carcass.

We usually do a running buffet boxing day, there's going to be ham, prawns salad and lots of savoury snacks.

I would cook a small turkey crown at home to have cold- I prefer turkey sandwiches and cold meat with bubble and squeak to Christmas dinner itself.

I've cooked a small turkey crown before with stuffing and pigs in blankets when not at home Xmas day as leftover sandwiches are what Xmas is all about for us

Thanks for the replies. I’ll be adding a small turkey crown to this weeks shopping list! 😊