If you host for large family...

[shylatte]

How do you manage the logistics of the dinner, in terms of both cooking and serving?
I've been doing a few practise runs and even with a three tier steamer I can't see how I will be able to do enough veg for 12 people. I'm thinking to buy something a bit more industrial?
Re serving food, our table is large but only seats 6 very comfortably. Do you squash people in, set up a pasting table extension or just banish dc from the table? I'm really not in favour of the last option.

God, yes, immersivecreader. The pre-Christmas cleaning. I have just been cleaning the dining room; we have a lot of old glasses on the mantelpiece. I dusted every one, inside and out, and they will not be touched again until January.

I won’t be spending three days cleaning after the family leave; we will just live in comfy post-Christmas squalor and do a bit at a time when we feel like it.,

Build your meal around the cooking facilities that you have, rather than the other way round. The microwave is your friend, assuming you have one.

In the oven:

• Turkey - taken out an hour before and kept warm under towels.
• Roast potatoes - can be par boiled ahead, tossed in flour, seasoning and fat and frozen, ready to roast.
• Roast carrots and parsnips - no need to par-boil, can fit loads on a tray.
• Stuffing and pigs in blankets - can be made ahead and frozen. Stuffing done in a tray or loaf tin takes up less room than individual balls. Likewise chipolatas better than tiny sausages.

Microwave (gets things really hot and doesn’t need careful monitoring):

• Red cabbage (made ahead, freezes well)
• Celeriac or other root veg mash (made the night before - reduces volume of roast vegetables needed)

Hob:

• Brussel sprouts fried en mass, in a wok - add pancetta and chestnuts etc if you feel like it. Do two batches if needed.
• Gravy (made ahead and frozen - reheat in a big saucepan, or microwave it)
• Bread sauce (made day before - reheat very gently)

It’s a balance between doing enough different dishes to get sufficient food overall vs not over complicating things. Eg I wouldn’t suggest a celeriac mash for a small gathering, but if you’re short on oven space then it’ll compensate for a shortage of roast potatoes. Likewise the red cabbage is a great stretcher, and very undemanding.

You’ll need big oven trays to maximise your oven capacity. And big serving dishes and bowls that can go in the microwave to heat up or in the oven to keep warm. Get everyone seated first, then bring out bowls of food to be passed straight around, not put on the table. Lead with the stuff you have plenty of (mash, red cabbage etc.) and bring out the stuff you have less of (roast veggies, probably) last.

Oh, and buy an extra oven shelf (or two) - if you can find one that fits. You probably have enough physical oven space for lots of trays of roast veggies - but you probably don’t have enough shelves.

@MyAnacondaMight that is a brilliant reply, thank you very much. My next thread is going to be a Christmas dinner recipe one, as this is the first year I'm hosting and a roast is not something I'm very experienced in.

I used to do 22.
A set of good 'stay-warm' serving dishes is a good idea.
Very well rested meat and very hot gravy! And don't feel guilt using packet gravy either! Stuffing balls and pigs in blankets don't suffer from being served cold. As long as there's steam coming off the veg and gravy!
Two serving dishes of each item to speed up dishing up - more than 6 people and those roast potatoes take an age to get round the table (if you don't have enough serving dishes then save any foil containers over the next few weeks).
Paste tables can be u reliable - invest in a folding picnic/camping table. I find a positioning in T shape works well as people can see each other better than a refectory style.
And cover the whole lot in foil once it's ready to give yourself time to take breath, pop to the loo, guzzle a wine, and have a spritz of perfume.
Once the drinks are being poured, crackers cracked, silly jokes being bandied about, Xmas music playing, it won't matter anyway.
Also, you have 12 people - excellent for a round-table of the 12 Days, get the dc to make up headbands for each day, make the guests wear them and they have to sing their part - fantastic distraction!

@GalaPie what are these serving dishes that you speak of? Also on the note of gravy, how many gravy boats do you put out? Or do you just make more as you need it?

I have hired tables in the past and used a different room rather than kitchen diner.
Use slow cooker for red cabbage. Cook swede and carrot mash day before and re heat.
Always cook my Turkey slowly overnight.
Easy starter and pud plus one other for dessert. Will either buy or pre make dessert.

We have 2 gravy boats they we put out. Gravy is made over the course of a few days (something to do with chicken wings and a lot of roasting and straining through a muslin? I don’t know, I don’t cook, that’s dh’s job ).
Our table does not look pretty, it’s too packed out with food and drinks etc to have things like decorative centre pieces

Here they are, £24.99 on Amazon and very useful year round!

"Our table does not look pretty, it’s too packed out with food and drinks etc to have things like decorative centre pieces".

Yes, TheChosenTwo, ours starts looking good but when the ravening horde of gannets descend it doesn't last long.

I do a buffet setup and let people make their own plates and then sit down at the table. I keep gravy, rolls, butter etc available on the table, but trying to pass dishes with a big group just isn’t practical.

My SIL does plated. She has a few people tasked with bringing out the plates and serving each course so it goes quickly.

Both methods and their pros and cons. I use my method because when I hosting there tend to be a fair number of picky eaters and I want them to pick their favorites.

Self service, no formal place settings, cram in the chairs and cram in the people.

@TrickyD I often look on enviously at festive looking tables complete with charger plates things, foliage, candles, just pretty things and get over myself - we have the biggest house and table so everyone comes to us by default but it’s still not big enough for it to look good 😂
Oh well! We do like having a big family Christmas I suppose. And to be fair, last year when it was just the 5 of us we just sat at the island, still no festive centrepieces!!

Table wise we got a cheap second hand ikea desk. Legs are height adjustable so we can make it match our dining table. We put the dishes on the kitchen worktop and people help themselves. (Great grandparents get served).

We use our patio table with a festive cloth on.

Re gravy, for 16 you’re going to need around 2 litres. Don’t mess around with little gravy boats - Christmas is the one time of the year where you can serve it direct from your Pyrex measuring jug, or whatever else you have to hand. Make lots of it, and make sure it’s very hot - but nobody gets to judge whether you make it yourself or from a packet.

Are you supposed to wash/tidy up after each course or at the very end?

^

We just bunged everything in the dishwasher. But with many people to serve you may run out of olates/cutlery... So plan ahead for that. Or use the same cutlery?

Last time we hosted folks offered to help but ended up drunk in the living room on white wine.

I think as pp's have said, organisation is the key, so make ahead as much as possible.

We served the (6) kids first, then had them watch a film whilst the adults ate.

I do gravy in ramekins on a small plate to catch the drips. It’s easy to have several on the table that way.

How you handle dishes depends on how much you have and how much kitchen space you have. I have enough of both to get us through the night and deal with it all at the end. DH and I do try to rinse along the way a bit and then we end the night making sure everything is rinsed and the dishwasher is loaded. We end up running it about 5 times before we get through the entire stack. Not a chance I’m washing that all by hand. Im also relentless about making sure washing up happens during cooking so if something can be washed before the meal begins it is washed.

Do you find your guests stay overnight.. so then there’s the next meal and another lot of clearing up?

Our guest stay for days, they are all coming from too far away to go home after just one day. So yes, I get up the next morning and start again. First time we hosted we just had 6 in the house so there was enough left over to have leftovers on Boxing Day (my preferred option). When there's 12 there is never enough leftovers so I try and plan something easy.

Have 12 people in the house for several days is daunting!

I bought 2 six foot folding plastic tables years ago. They go up as one long table in our lounge...dining room not big enough. I bought a 4 metre piece of lovely fabric from local fabric mill shop which I use as a table cloth. When lunch is over, the tables are cleared and put away in the garage - plenty of room then for presents and games! Good Luck

@modernfemininity

Have 12 people in the house for several days is daunting!

Tell me about it!

Feel free to start a whole other thread!

Just had 6 extra for 4 days..
Food, oh the food. Space in rooms. Bedding. etc etc

Fun, but tiring, especially adding a number of kids into the mix.

Re clear up - assuming you have a dishwasher, set it going immediately after breakfast and make sure it’s emptied ASAP. Then all cooking pans etc go into it as they are finished with, set it going before you sit down for lunch. Depending on the length of the cycle you can either take ten minutes between courses to empty (and put away!) and reload, or leave it until you’ve finished.

Meanwhile, as you clear the table have a system - something to scrape food waste into, a bag for cracker detritus, and then stack plates etc. into plastic crates. Depending on space you can then dump the crates into the utility room if you have one, a corner of the kitchen, or just outside the back door. And then keep on emptying and reloading the dishwasher at intervals.

If you are hosting multiple meals over several days you might find it simpler to store the clean plates and cutlery on the table rather than scrabbling around at the back of cupboards (this assumes that like me you don’t have cupboard space for 12 place settings and so tend to store the excess somewhere inaccessible).

Personally I quite enjoy the chance to escape into the kitchen periodically to do a spot more clearing in peace and quiet (and to snaffle cold pigs in blankets) but appreciate that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Depending on who is staying we also sometimes just end up with a crowd of us in the kitchen, one washing, 2-3 drying and putting away, leaving roasting dishes in soak for the next day. Anyone not doing that gets the joy of helping small children put together fiddly Christmas presents!

Another thing to think about if you’re catering for much larger numbers than normal - consider where you will store the extra food. If your fridge is usually full anyway, it might be worth digging out some cool boxes or clearing space in the garage for extra veg and other things which you normally keep in the ‘fridge but which are giving way to meat and milk for the masses.

If they’re staying a few days it can be useful to keep an eye on milk etc. and plan to send minions (or escape yourself) to the corner shop periodically, rather than trying to keep enough for the whole holiday.

Roasted root veg only need a few minutes in the steamer before going into the oven (the carrots, parsnips and butternut squash only - onions and garlic skip the steaming and go straight to the marinade and oven part).

You can cook some, take out slightly underdone and keep hot in a foil covered dish in the warm oven which will let them finish off. Letting you cook another batch or something different in steamer.

Pre-steam cauliflower in florets (can be the day before) and pop into ovenproof dish covered in (hot or cold) cheese sauce to reheat and get nicely browned in the oven while spuds and/or root veg finish roasting.

Take frozen petits pois peas out of the freezer to defrost in the early morning when putting turkey into the oven - by the time you are nearly ready to serve, they will already be thawed so will cook sufficiently by just pouring a full kettle of freshly boiled water into their bowl/pot and leaving to sit for 5-10 minutes, rather than needing an additional heat source. (Baby spinach can also be perfectly wilted by pouring a full kettle of boiling water over the spinach in a colander draining into the sink - to allow it to drain as it doesn't need to soak).

If you have a large group, it probably means a large joint of meat of some sort, which needs to rest after it comes out anyway so there is loads of time then to roast potatoes and lots of veggies. And then to turn down the oven to keep things warm while you finish off the last few things.