where do you buy your roast potatoes from??

[zippy539]

That's it really. I need some lovely, infallible roast potatoes for Christmas dinner. I thought that someone said Iceland's were good but can't remember. Also - how big a bag would you need for 9 people? Ta!

I can and I will. I have a Quorn roast/and a cook from frozen joint, roasties in a packet and frozen veg with frozen yorkshires and sauces from a packet.

Don't care, i usually cook from scratch but want to see the kids and the telly instead of only the kitchen on xmas day.

oooh errr, feeling a bit faint here!

OO - I don't know - all Christmas traditions in our house are from growing up in Ireland (except that we now have brandy butter with Christmas pudding, as I am too idle to make sherry sauce which is what all my relatives at home make.

while i'm all in favour of taking sensible short-cuts with accompaniments on christmas day i'm at some of these!

mind you i do know someone who made absolutely everything (including cranberry sauce) from scratch last year. i wasn't terribly sympathetic when she told me how stressful it had all been though!

What is the white sauce for anyway?

Sorry being thick here, I have eaten Aunt Bessies roasts and they were fine, I prefer to do my own as I don't like greasy roasts, but if you want proper crispy ones you do need a fat of fat (I'm on a diet)

Does everyone make cauliflower cheese as well as all the other veg then? I do carrots, broccoli, roast parsnips and sprouts (well if I did Christmas dinner, but MIL in doing it!)

Can't read all the tread as mouth watering all over laptop LOL but can anyone tell me whether my goose fat, which was drained and frozen last christmas, would be ok to use this year for roasties?
And to add, DH does the roasties and he has got a bit lazy and used Aunt Bessie. Macro do a McCain version which has less in the way of additives etc, so probably healthier though not a patch on the real thing I know [drool]

bossykate, I always make cranberry sauce - it takes about 15 minutes! You just chuck loads of things in a pan and leave them for a while. Can be made in advance too - not difficult or time consuming! (so it wasn't that that streesed her out)

bread sauce tastes like wallpaper paste anyway!

The gravy you can make in advance some time while the turkey is cooking

I bought cranberry sauce from waitrose

Stuffing, make the night before, ditto with sausages wrapped in bacon

Honestly I found it no prob for 16!

then i don't know why it was so stressful! i do roasts quite often - christmas dinner isn't that hard imo - apart from the serving up. i don't ever do a starter though - why would you? and i don't cook to impress the guests with what a wonderful cook i am - i cook to give them a good meal.

mine doesn't taste like wallpaper paste - it is delicious, really creamy and savoury and nutmeggy - mmmm!

Oh don't say that to my mother bk. I get this face whenever I tell her Christmas dinner is just a glorified roast.

but it is...

Can never understand the panic about Christmas Lunch. It's simple stuff - just a bit of a big sunday roast - and much easier than farting around with dinner party type food. Mind you, over the years have given up making up certain things from scratch. Don't have starter. Buy stuffing, buy cranberry sauce. don't bother with any sort of bread sauce as always ended up throwing most of it away. Get husband/partner/child/whatever to peel veg night before and leave them in water. Always do LOADS of sausages wrapped in bacon. Roasties are great colour if you put some saffron in the water when you boil them and taste even better if you shove a couple of garlic cloves in the roasting tin. Always buy Christmas pud - can't be arsed to make it. Prefer trifle myself! My biggest problem is that we have moved this year and I am very used to an Aga and how have a MUCH smaller oven so will have to do some juggling!

It's a bit more than a roast dinner in my house ... where my dad won't eat turkey, my mother and dh insist on turkey, and I'm a veggie.

Could be worse; my ex-BIL was a Muslim, so there couldn't be any pork on the table either.

ok so it is three simultaneous roast dinners for you!

motheroftwoboys - "farting around with dinner party type food" to show off and then saying how stressful it all is! yup, with you there.

Yes ... and only three shelves in my oven. And every year I wonder why I volunteer to do it here ...

I have made my bread sauce today, and it is in the freezer, complete with studded onion for gentle reheating.

I don't like shop bought roasties, thinkt hey are too dry and really not nice. A shortcut that I came across in catering was to deep fry tinned new potatoes. It actually tastes ok, better than shiop bought anyway.

packet white sauce and bread sauce?
frozen potatoes and parsnips?

you lazy lot, do you all have money to burn?

Good for you doing roast spuds for 16 Countess, but doing them for 12 in a broom cupboard with a single half size oven, as well as the other stuff was beyond me.

I am not worthy

This thread is brilliant btw, lots of Fanny Craddock style shock and deep disapproval at people's culinary inadequacies .

i am fanny craddock

maybe should do christmas in fifties ballgown and pearls

lol enid