Christmas Dinner tips and tricks: share them with Aunt Bessie's - chance to win £300

[AnnMumsnet]

The team at Aunt Bessie's would love to know all about your Christmas Dinner tips and tricks - what makes your festive roast dinner go down well with your family? Do you prepare in advance? What really makes it special in your household? What's the main dish - do you have a turkey or goose? Or something else? What about vegetarian dishes? What about accompaniments like bread sauce, cranberry sauce and stuffing - do you make your own following family recipes, buy it in or something else?

Aunt Bessie's say "Christmas Dinner is about more than just great food – it’s about gathering the family around the table and enjoying the moments that we have together. So we’d love to hear how you make the most of this time by telling us your quick tips and tricks that make room for the important things."

Add your tips for the best Christmas Dinner below and you will be entered into a prize draw where one person will win a £300 Love2Shop voucher.

Thanks and good luck

MNHQ

Insight Terms and Conditions Apply

Cook most things in foil trays and dispose of afterwards - can't stand scrubbing roasting tins for hours!

For me, the best thing I can do is sit down and write out the exact timings so I know when I need to put each thing in the oven. This saves a lot of stress on the day.

This year I gave up on making everything from scratch and bought Tesco/M&S/Aunt Bessie bung-in-the-oven dishes and it was bliss! Everything came out perfectly and I was able to spend the time I saved for drinking gin

I bought all ready prepared food (gourmet ranges)!!! It was my first year cooking Christmas dinner and it was the easiest thing ever (I was also fairly pissed at the time) - recommend it to anyone. Barely any washing up either - winner!!!

We're mostly veggie here, so our main dish for a roast tends to be a stuffed mushroom. Normally the stuffing is almond butter, ground pumpkin seeds and spinach but for Christmas Day, I add chestnuts and cranberries and then cover the whole thing in puff pastry. We have it with a gravy made from red wine and blackstrap molasses. I also do spares to have cold with bubble and squeak on Boxing Day.

Flour your parboiled potatoes before adding to seasoned HOT goose fat - perfect roasties every time.

Buy your stuffing balls /pigs in blankets instead of making them, makes things so much easier.

We usually get all my siblings together with their children together for Christmas Day - so there's a lot of us and we make it easier by bringing a hot dish each. Though the problem we end up with is that my DM gets too enthusiastic and we end up with a huge variety of dishes! We usually have turkey, roast potatoes, yorkshire puddings, various veg, roast beef, gammon, pigs in blankets. We don't bother with a starter though as the main meal is enough.

My tip would be not to bother buying it all in from M&S, like we did this year. Food was nice enough, but we still had to do the oven juggling thing, and I missed cooking it from scratch (we're veggie and it usually involves makking some elaborate pie).

Universally loved big breakfast like muffins, eggs, salmon, hollandaise.

Hot nibbles, no other lunch. Booze.

Lunch around 4pm. No starter. Veg prepped night before. All sides Eg pigs in blankets bought in. Shop bought pud, cake, mince pies, nibbles.

Boxing day leftover meat plus lovely salads and a big ham, all done Christmas eve so no cooking that day. Very chilled out.

So who won then????

Make things in advance and freeze! Keep it simple on the day - no need to have fancy breakfast AND fancy lunch AND fancy dinner. This year we had normal breakfast, soup and rolls for lunch then all out piggery for Christmas dinner.

do a few dishes really well, rather than serving a million different things. Quality, not quantity

The bit I love best is doing a really special starter. Its generally fish and this year it was a retro crayfish and smoked salmon cocktail with trad cocktail sauce. Yum. I also cannot have Christmas dinner without a tonne of bread sauce and I am the only one who eats it!

We have a delicious Christmas dinner every year which nobody can ever fault. This is because I don't cook it. My tip is if you can afford it, go out for Christmas dinner.

Has this thread closed now?

Preparation ahead of time for veg. Make veggie main in advance and freeze.

Wine while cooking 😳

Prepare things in advance as much as possible - including buying in pre-prepared where possible, e.g. yorkshires

Shake the potatoes really vigorously in the pot after they’re parboiled, so they crumble at the edges which helps them go crispy.

Definitely make cauliflower cheese.