Xmas day cooking disasters

[Empress13]

We always have the illusion that a perfect dinner will be served on Xmas Day but the reality can be so different! On a light hearted note tell us your Xmas Day cooking disasters. I always remember the time my SIL’s oven gave up the ghost in the middle of roasting the Turkey she had to finish it in her sister’s oven !

Seared the nicer half of a (very expensive) fillet of beef ahead of making Beef Wellington. Left it on a shelf to cool while we opened presents. Didn't realise a Springer Spaniel could climb that high....

Luckily the less nice half was in the freezer.

My mum is the only one who likes bread sauce and one year when we were hosting, I decided to go all out and make it from scratch.

When it came to it, in my slightly inebriated state I managed to separate the marinading spices or whatever was in it from the milk and pour it down the sink!

Mum made her displeasure known and I've never made it since (sorry mum).

As a child I remember we had a power cut at around midday. We used to have a big family Christmas and so were expecting to feed around 15 people that day. Frustratingly I don't remember the outcome

We stayed in a beautiful home in rural Wales for Christmas a couple of years ago. It had an aga and I was so excited to use it, I’ve always dreamed of owning one.

Well, I don’t really know if we did something wrong with it but we started the Christmas dinner at about 10am and it wasn’t finished until 5pm, we had to use the little convection oven in the end to complete it. It just took the piss with everything, even boiling the veg. It made me realise I don’t want an aga.

My children remind me every year about the Christmas I ruined. Christmas 2008 has left them traumatised.

My crime? Burning the pigs in blankets.

On Xmas Eve morning we put the frozen turkey in the garage to defrost - on top of the tumble dryer which we then use twice! Turkey seemed ok but we didn’t risk it.

My worst Christmas dinner was also due to an Aga... it was here when we bought the house, it wasn't here 12 months after that Christmas. The turkey was fine everything else an absolute pain and we had 10 pepper including small kids. You can't just get it hotter once you've "used" too much heat - the roast veg wasn't crispy and I was microwaving peas and gravy and nearly crying by the end.

I never understood why they had one. It made the kitchen unbearable in the summer so it had to be turned off and you end up with a temporary hob. Lovely for casseroles but you'll never eat a decent stir fry again. It's not as if it were a country farmhouse either, it's a Victorian semi 30mins from central London.

Every year the food is cold because they serve it up 20 minutes before other things are ready or they’ll insist on washing up every pan after they serve each item.

Who is they?

Every time my MIL does the Xmas dinner she overcooks all the veg without exception. She will not let us help her and rejects invites from us so we have to go and endure it and pretend it is lovely.

The year that the turkey was discovered to have gone off and dinner was hurriedly defrosted steaks.

The year there was no power in one half of the village but our side (on another line) had power..and due to regular power cuts, had a gas bottle cooker as backup..so 3 turkeys were cooked (2 in the morning, in main and gas cooker, for neighbours from the other side of the village, and our own -much, much later).

Years ago the butchers used to put all the giblets etc for making stock into a plastic bag and back inside the turkey. My poor mum hadn’t realised, so when my father came to carve it, he discovered a horrible melted plastic mess 😂😂

One year my Dad went to get the turkey late on xmas eve and could only get frozen, for some reason he decidee the best place to defrost them was on the floor in the utility room overnight - we had 2 dogs

As I child I remember mum steaming the Christmas pud which my nan had made the previous year. When it was came to be served, it was just a hollow shell as mice had eaten the inside. I didn't mind as I couldn't stand the stuff.

One Christmas we had just moved in and had an unfamiliar oven. Opposite to all the uncooked turkey, this beast of an oven had the turkey dessicated in short order. Not even bathing slices in gravy could save it.

Years ago, mum used to have an Aga-type cooker, so she popped the roast potatoes in there as the electric cooker was full of turkey, etc. We all ate dinner, all fine, then came down Boxing Day to a smoky kitchen. yes, the roast potatoes are still roasting in the Aga! That slow oven was responsible for many food items missing from a meal, the classic one being rice pudding she forgot about!

It was the first Christmas after my mum died - she’d always done the big Xmas dinner. I was determined to do a proper roast for my dad but had never done it alone before. I read a few articles in the paper from various TV chefs about the best way to roast a turkey - one said on low heat for hours and hours, and other said 1.5 hours on a very high heat. I got it into my head that it was 1.5 hours on a low heat (what can I say, I wasn’t thinking straight given the circumstances) so when we came to carve the bird, it wasn’t cooked properly. The breast meat was ok but the rest was still pink so we ate the breast and gave the rest to the dogs.

Threw out the whole dinner and the drink for ten plus people because of an hour?

It was the drunkenness that set her off.

I once spilled the gravy that I had been meticulously crafting using that Jamie Oliver chicken wing recipe.
Only I didn’t just spill it. In some weird out of body experience I managed to jerk my arms whilst holding the two huge jugs of it and it went everywhere. Kitchen wallls, floor, blinds, me, my mum, DH mum all covered. I’m still not sure how it actually happened.
Safe to say we are now a strictly bisto family!

I did the same, but with wine. Decanted a very nice red and on the way to the table the decanter slipped out of my hands, did a weird twirling motion as it fell. The kitchen units, walls and ceiling had a lovely splash of red - looked like a murder scene. The whole place needed repainted.

In fairness my DS would go into mourning if that happened - his favourite part of the day.

One year we decided to go all traditional and cook a goose. Well, we didn't realise how enormous they are and we needed to hack it in half and cook one half in the gas oven and the other in the electric one. It looked absolutely dreadful, like a mutilated corpse (which, I suppose, it was).

I don't remember any disasters with the main meal but the pudding often becomes a hairy moment.
My mum heated the brandy and lit it. All good. One year she forgot the real Holly on the top which merrily burned away. The next year she decided to top it up and as she poured from the jug the fire followed the stream of hot brandy and there was a nice little fire burning in the brandy jug. We film it every year now 😂

Sorry this made me laugh so much !