Top tips for preparing Christmas dinner dishes in advance - freezing ahead etc?

[franch]

Just starting to plan our Christmas meal, and thinking about which dishes can be frozen ahead or at least made a day or two in advance.

I've frozen parboiled potatoes before but not much else - any tips?

Depends what you are making, but loads can be made ahead.

I make lots for over the christmas period.

Soups, sauces, a couple of quiches, casseroles, a fish and prawn pie, stewed fruit (to use for quick crumbles etc), truffles, a couple of other desserts.

You can freeze mash potato, braised red cabbage, the list is endless.

Take a look at the christmas magazines out atm (Ideal home, good housekeeping etc), they have loads of freezable recipe ideas.

Thanks CO. I'm not organised enough to cook ahead for the Christmas period as such, and we have a tiny freezer - was just thinking of the Christmas Day meal.

Red cabbage is a good tip. What about stuffing?

These parsnips are nice.
I'm sure you can freeze stuffing. I'd even go so far as to freeze it after cooking and then all you need to do is warm it through on the day.

Make your Yorkshires and freeze them

Yes (depending on what your stuffing consists off).

I am lucky I have 3 feezers and 3 fridges (plus 3 ovens, a 5 ring hob and 2 microwaves, 2 slow cookers and a mutlitude of other gizmos and gagets).

My god CO, do you live in a restaurant???

Thanks for the tips everyone. I was thinking about Nigella's gingerbread stuffing - could I freeze that?

Cranberry sauce? Does it depend on the recipe?

I checked in the Nigella Christmas book and it says to make the stuffing as far as the "add the eggs and pepper" stage and then freeze. Thaw overnight in the fridge. Or made fresh it will keep in the fridge for 2 days.
BTW McVitie's Jamaica ginger cake is half price in Morrisons at the moment if you have one nearby.

Thanks so much JL!

LOL, no not a restaraunt. I have a free standing amercian style fridge freezer in the kitchen, and a chest freezer in the garage. I also have the old integrated frige freezer from when we had our kitchen redone in the garage which is only switched on a t busy times for extra storage. Plus I have a small fridge from my uni days, which we use fror drinks when we have parties/xmas etc.

We also have a spare microwave/combination oven in the garage (again from before we had the kitchen done, now have a built in one) that is brought up into the kitchen for bust times!

Wow CO, sounds like domestic heaven

Wow CO on the appliance front!

Just looked at your profile and you do say you like to be organised

You must entertain alot to use the fridge/freezer space!

BTW your cakes are amazing - is that your day job?

OMG CO, you must be the original domestic goddess (bet I'm not the first to say that).

BTW your profile says you have no kids - ?? I'm sure you do!

Erm yes 2 kids (both at full time school now).

Yes the cakes are my "day job", although pretty small scale atm but hoping to change that as my reputation increases.

We entertain quite regularly, but I also bulk cook (make 3x the amount for casseroles, soups, lasagnes, fish pies, quiches, fruit for crumbles etc. Meaning a lot of meals are just grabbed out of the freezer, defrosted and bunged into the oven.