Rescuing a Christmas Pudding

[StainlessSteelCat]

This is my reward for feeling smug that I'd cooked my pud at the begining of december.

It was carefully stored in teh plastic bowl I had steamed it in. A little too carefully balanced at the edge on top of the freezer. It fell off ... plastic bowl has cracked. I don't have another the same size to do a straight swap into. Do I:
a) try and wrap it up in foil so it's water tight,
b) tie it up on one (or more layers) of the old muslins I never threw out, and this is the fabled moment they really are coming in handy,
c) spend time I don't really have tomorrow hoping I can track down a replacement bowl?

I'm a fan of a). Any suggestions?

I've never cooked a Christmas pud so I may be missing something here, but if I was you I'd wrap it in foil.

Do you have a slightly bigger bowl? I'm not convinced foil will work.

Cling film will be your friend here. Cling your pudding as tight as you can, place it back into your dish and place the whole lot into a plastic bag and seal with either a cable tie or clippit. You can steam it like this and no water will get in. I did exactly the above last night to steam a big veggie sausage type thing that I then wrapped in pastry, froze and will bake on Christmas day.

I suspect the muslin will work best to keep it all together then could you slip into another bowl?

I'd use a slightly bigger bowl and seal it well before steaming. I often steam puds in small pyrex bowls, with a pleat of foil over the top, secured with a silicone band.

Brilliant, thanks all.

Only other bowl I can find is much much bigger, not even sure it would fit in my largest pan. So I think immediate transfer to another bowl is not an option.

Cling film sounds fun. Think I might try a few layers of cling film around the cracked bowl. I'll replace the top layers of greaseproof and foil, and steam for a couple of hours. In a bag. If that's not working I'll find another similar sized bowl tomorrow.

Worst case scenario is we eat next years pud this year - I always make two, and store one for next year. Luckily that was this year But I'm not losing this one without a fight!

Is the second pud in the same sized bowl?

Is this to store long term? Or to reheat for Christmas Day....if it's the latter forget steaming, just microwave. If it's the former I'd wrap in cling film and look for a bowl after Christmas.

The cracked bowl turned out to be the only one that size in the house. Of course. I have 2 others in slightly larger bowls. My original plan was to eat one of the larger ones, and save the other 2 for next year/present.

I have wrapped the poor victim in cling film, replaced the greaseproof and foil lids, and steamed for a couple of hours. I'll leave the cling and lids on for now, I think that will have killed off anything nasty that might have got in. When it's cool, I'll probably wrap it again, and then store till I can find a new bowl, and eat my original intended victim this year.

Thank you all, rescued pud will live to be eaten another year!