First time hosting Xmas dinner - where to begin?!

[Notascoobie]

Help needed please - me and my husband are hosting Xmas dinner for the first time this year as we finally live somewhere large enough to accommodate family staying a couple of nights. We have wanted to host for ages so are super excited but where to begin?! How does everyone work out how much to buy in portion wise? And any obvious tips for how to manage the cooking with hosting duties? We have two young children and aunties will be on hand to entertain but still...

thanks in advance

Get everyone drinking as soon as they walk in the door then if you mess up the dinner nobody will care

Delia Smith’s Christmas is an oldie but goodie: keep everything simple and copious drinks.

@Notascoobie how big is your oven?? A lot of sides can be cooked and frozen well in advance. The air fryer is brilliant for doing roast potatoes and parsnips 😁 that will leave the oven free for the main course. Failing that follow @TigerDroveAgain ....if they are tipsy they won't notice the food lol

It's a souped up roast dinner, just keep that in mind.
Decide what time you will be eating. Factor in resting time for the turkey, work back from there.
Doing lunch in stages may work better for little ones as a v long lunch can be v boring. Eg could do canapes in place of starter, long gap before pudding.
Prep what you can in advance. Jamie's gravy divides MN, equivalents are out there.
Unless your family are dreadful, noone cares if it's a bit late. Don't try and do too much (MN tends to advocate for at least 5 different veg, 2 meats and 3 puddings. . Don't do that).

If they're all staying for a few days, don't forget to meak plan for the whole duration! Quick meals or ones you can make in advance and freeze for the days around Christmas (and don't forget stuff like cheese and biscuits, crisps etc). Have a vegetable prepping party (with booze) after the kids are in bed on Christmas eve. Serve a decent breakfast Christmas day morning, then it doesn't matter if lunch is a bit late.
Things like roast potatoes will stay warm for at least an hour if you cover tightly with foil straight out of the oven.
Check what condiments people are particularly attached to, and make sure you have them.

Prep is your friend in the early days. Now I’m in my 40s I can knock out a Christmas dinner for 12 without batting an eyelid but when I first started cooking them on my own in my teens I relied on Christmas Eve prep to get me through.

First, decide what your must have extras are. For DH it’s yorkies and pigs in blankets and for DS it’s cauliflower cheese, for me it’s a green vegetable that isn’t a sprout, so I tend to do broccoli and green beans as well. You can parboil your potatoes, carrots and parsnips the night before to cut down on roasting time. Red cabbage can be made in advance and heated in the microwave. An air fryer will turn out A* roast potatoes.

Turkey, beef, ham.

Roast potatoes
Yorkshire puddings
Stuffing
Pigs in blankets
Cranberry sauce

Cauliflower cheese
Roast parsnips
Roast carrots
Sprouts
Peas and broccoli, mainly for the kids.
Braised red cabbage, although I may skip it this year. I don't love it as much as I want to. It just looks nice and feels festive.

Trifle
Cheesecake

And then bed. Feeling stuffed. Don't know how anyone could drink alcohol after eating all that.

Do you cook often? Who is your preferred chef/recipe book author? They almost certainly have a Christmas recipe book with time guides in. Pick one and just follow it (and annotate with anything that did/didn’t work). YY to Delia if you don’t often cook.

Divide and conquer shopping in advance, so people can bring booze/cheese/crackers/whatever and you can just focus on food. Make the sides (including gravy) whenever you want and get them in the freezer, then it’s less to do on the day. In terms of quantities, however many roast potatoes you think and then add another 2 whole potatoes. If you’re happy to have it leftover/eat it cold, err on the side of caution and make more.

What time do the children normally eat/nap? Will this work with doing a big roast (ie an 11:30 lunch for the children would make your timings hard and other adults probably wouldn’t love it). Does eating later make your life easier?

Make a list of stuff now and start buying the non fresh stuff now. Anything that will be fine with the sell by date, get them now. Don’t wait for a food delivery because if they’ve made any substitutions you’ll have to go out and it’s a lot to search for and carry. Start thinking about chairs, plates, glasses, cutlery etc. Have you got enough? Who can you borrow from and when will you collect it?

Buy loads of those tin foil trays; you will be so grateful come washing up time, and they’re perfect for storing leftover meat etc in the fridge because you can bend them to fit around cream etc. And buy them now so you aren’t running around trying to find them on Christmas Eve.

DH has a particular stuffing recipe, we’ve worked out that the best pigs are chipolatas from the butcher with Sainsbury’s streaky bacon and we’d never have a Christmas without Yorkies, so these are all done and in the freezer at the beginning of December. Set alarms so you remember to take things out in time to defrost.

Google your nearest One Stop/Tesco Express etc and check their Christmas Day opening hours; there’s always someone who’s going to be craving an orange Fanta and Pringles when you’ve only bought Lemonade and salted peanuts, or someone who’ll only eat Paxo (speaking of, don’t go too fancy with the stuffing if you’re catering to loads of people because someone will hate walnuts/cranberries etc). Tell everyone that if there’s anything specific they want to drink, then to being a bottle of it with them. You provide, tea, coffee, squash or juice and soft drinks; they can bring their alcohol.

We get the biggest turkey we can find because we love it and people are always going to want a turkey sandwich. That goes in the oven at 6am. In his Christmas dinner special, Gordon Ramsey said you should rest it for as long as you cook it, so I put tinfoil on it and then a folded up towel (I don’t know why but my mum did it, because her mum did it) and leave it on the side until it’s ready to carve.

Also, rather than have 27 different saucepans out on the hob, buy those packets of veg that you can do in the microwave and they steam cook. My family aren’t massive veg fans so are happy with peas, carrots and sweetcorn or broccoli, but M&S do posher versions. It will save you so much time and effort and there isn’t a soul who’ll be able to tell the difference once the gravy is on.

Put someone in charge of drinks; including for you. Put someone else in charge of laying the table. And remember, you can hide all manner of things with gravy (however much gravy you think you need, double it) and it’s really just a fancy roast dinner, so don’t spend so long in the kitchen that you miss all the fun. Pick one person to help you in the kitchen, (pick someone who does nice food, but who doesn’t fancy themselves as Fanny Craddock; you don’t need that pressure, it’s just a bit of dinner). Don’t try anything new for the first time; Christmas Day is not the time to be experimenting with Goose Fat if you’re not really familiar with it.

I find the Xmas dinner easy - it’s just a big roast. What I find hard is remembering all the other meals you have to do for people staying with you and having space in the fridge for it all. I was constantly popping to the Co-op to get more milk, bread, juice etc last year.

M&S is my answer.
Everything comes with instructions & times.
Then work your times backwards, from the time you want dinner.

We used a kids blackboard for the times
12.00 turkey in
1 roasts in
2 turkey out
Etc Wiping them off as we went.

You could do it with a bit of paper on the worktop. Score out when done.

Ooh, and buy twice the usual amount of bread, loo roll, kitchen roll, tin foil and lay out loads of Pringles and sweets for them to pick at while you’re cooking. Last year, DH made a stash of sausage rolls, froze them and served them hot when people started arriving. It was before everything went in the oven so didn’t cause any issues, and they went down really well. They will definitely still be hungry enough for dinner.

And we do two puddings; something fruity and something chocolate. M&S Black Forest gateau is the most delicious thing you will ever taste in your life and it’s freezable) , and then a lemon cheesecake from Sainsbury’s. A dollop of cream and everyone will be happy.

You guys are brilliant - thank you! Great advice.

Kid are 6 and 3. 6yo loves a roast dinner and 3 yo may pick at bits but I'm realistic that excitement of the day, having snacks available etc will probs lead to not much actual Xmas dinner being consumed by them and that's fine.

we are hosting my in laws who I get on with and tbh, even if it was a disaster - they wouldn't say! I guess it's just pressure me and my husband are putting on ourselves because we have been looking forward ting to hosting for years now and are so glad we don't have to be the ones travelling for once. there will be 6 adults, 2 children and everyone staying over from Xmas eve until Boxing Day

we have on standard size oven and then a smaller oven/non fan oven. Have a slow cooker but not air fryer. I am wondering if I should try and borrow one over xmas?

I do cook quite a bit but never anything fiddly when I'm cooking for a bigger group. Plus I veer towards Asian recipes because me and my husband love spicy food. My go to is BBC good food recipes! Not sure that helps?!

This is what I do (normally have 10-12 people)

Cook as much as I can in advance, freeze, and re heat on the day -
Spiced red cabbage
Stuffing
Proper gravy
Mashed carrot and swede

The day before
Sort a prep ahead starter (melon or something for the kids)
Make pudding
Prep meat
Cauliflower cheese
Yorkshire pudding mix
Make roast potatoes (add a bit more goose fat and gently re hear the next day)
Prep sprouts (take off horrible leaves and par boil)

On the day we have drinks and crisps and antipasti type snacks at lunchtime, and start eating mid afternoon and do games etc between courses so it's not too long sitting down for the kids. The only things I need to 'cook' are the sprouts, meat and Yorkshires, everything else is re heated

Top tips are
Don't get too drunk that you forget what you're doing
Write down timings/ order of everything and tick it off as you go. The booze and the number of people mean that you forget things you'd normally find easy

My tip would be too do as much as possible in advance.

Roast potatoes - parboil them days/weeks ahead, spread them on baking parchment on a roasting tray and open freeze. Once frozen, put them in a freezer bag. Cook them from frozen, adding 5 mins to the cooking time. They'll be even crisper than normal as the freezer dries the outer layer.

If you do parsnips, you can parboil them and freeze in the same way, again, cooking from frozen. I cook them in maple syrup and oil, it's this Nigella recipe https://www.nigella.com/recipes/maple-roast-parsnips

I'd buy ready prepped veg, so trimmed leeks, sprouts etc. No-one wants to be faffing about cleaning a leek (or whatever you have) on Christmas day. I also buy gravy, it's one less job, and also stuffing, just adding some chestnuts or cranberries to make it taste a bit more home made.

Good luck!

I use marks and Spencer’s food to order as it helps with most of it coming ready prepared so just needing cooked. I would always do my roast potatoes and pigs in blankets in the oven but I do finish them off in the airfryer so one is helpful if you can get it. I use a steamer for my veg so that saves the hob for the gravy. It is really just a big roast dinner albeit one we all like to get right.

Make sure you do get help with things like tidying up and the dishes. It’s your Christmas Day too. I’ve started this weekend to pick up some snacks and alcohol to spread the cost a little. Next shop will be onion chutney for the cheese, cranberry and goose fat and seafood cocktail sauce.

You can never roast enough potatoes.

Shopping wise, buy and cook a lot, the leftovers will last for days!

My biggest tip for a first-time Christmas lunch is that less is more. There’s no need to do 5 different types of vegetable as well as roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings (which have no place with turkey anyway), cauliflower cheese and all the rest. You’ll end up frazzled. Stick to the basics, and do them well.

Turkey, stuffing, pigs in blankets and roast potatoes will be expected. Maybe a few sprouts. After that as little as you can get away with! Nibbles and things on arrival with some drinks. A cold starter that can be prepped quickly - smoked salmon, pate or whatever. A bought Christmas pudding and something chocolate for those who can’t stand dried fruit as a desert. And then a few nice cheeses. All of which will mean you don’t spend all day in the kitchen and can actually enjoy the day :)

I use Delia and have for years. I happily cook for over a dozen and love it.

Prep as much as you can in advance.
Use a list of timings which you programme into your phone as alarms.
Cook the meat/s early, wrap in foil and bath towels and leave to rest on its own while you do everything else. It will still be hot and ten times better for a long resting time.
Get somebody to keep on top of offering drinks. It's a headache you won't need.

I genuinely love it, do several starters, 2 stuffings, 8 veg sides, 3 meats and a veggie option, 3 puddings. It's my favourite meal of the year and I'm well-practised so it doesn't take too long either. It really is all about the prep.

One thing I always forget - and I don't know if this is universal - but using all of my range, ovens, grill, burners etc leads to reduced power marginally for each element. I always have to turn everything up slightly higher.

I know you’ve been looking forward to it, but try and take the pressure off.

Get others to help, put the music on, have a drink on the go of something sparkly.
One way or another there will be food, it doesn’t matter if something gets burned/dropped/forgotten/the dog runs off with it. That’s the stuff memories are made of.
Relax and have a lovely time. We get to decide how stressful to make it.

You don't need to but half the stuff you do in advance and I never end up frazzled or stuck in the kitchen. I usually spend around an hour in there during the intense bit and before that it's just nipping in to baste.

And Yorkshire puddings are mandatory!

Oh I agree (though not about the yorkshires, but then I am from Yorkshire. Beef only!!) you can prep a lot in advance, but for the first time I’d keep it as simple as possible and enjoy the day :)

Agree. I find it’s better to knock the drinks back beforehand x

Keep it fairly simple, not masses of different veg and sides.
A cook book such as Delia’s Christmas one will be a big help.

To work out timings, go backwards from the time you want to sit down to eat. Whatever meat you’re having, it can be taken out to rest half an hour before eating, and a whole turkey can easily rest for an hour - loosely wrapped in foil with a tea towel on top it will keep hot very well.
This gives you plenty of time for cooking vegetables, making gravy, etc.

So if say you plan to eat at 3, work backwards e.g., turkey out at 2, in at (whenever), oven on a bit earlier, if it needs to pre heat.