Spill the beans... on cooking Xmas dinner for the first time

telboyo

gordothegopher wrote: »

An idea that's gone down well in our house the past few years is to serve your starter (soup, prawn cocktail, whatever) around 1pm, and then let people get up and do their own thing for a few hours before sitting back down at 3/4pm for the main course. It takes a bit of pressure off the cook to have the mains ready straight after the starter, and your guests will appreciate not having to starve themselves until later in the afternoon, and getting a bit of a break before digging in to a big meal! It also gives you a bit of leeway if you get your timings wrong as people will have already had something to eat.



Other things, people have already mentioned ... prepare as much as you can the night before, get people to help greet guests, take coats, pour drinks, set the table etc. Write out a plan of timings for everything and get yourself a timer to keep you on track. Most smart phones have multipler timers on them to you can set one for each thing you are cooking.

enjoy!

I like this idea, last year I stayed with the in-laws and they are obsessed with getting the table laid correctly etc. Consequently breakfast was not finished before 11:30 after washing dishes we had to go for a walk, admittedly it was very nice in the snow, but when we returned at 3:30 they started to prepare the Goose, dinner was notserved until 8 pm. I was ready to kill by then- I would have welcomed a bowl of soup mid afternoon.

portlandboy

Because Christmas is often said to be a "time for the kids" we have always given them the choice of what to have for Christmas dinner. Most kids just want to spend as much time as possible playing with the new toys etc. so our eldest (now 18) has chosen baked beans on bread and butter and the youngest usually has a "Santa-shaped" meat sandwich.
This year we had a fondue (very 70's!) and it was so easy to do. 2 decent fillet steaks went easily between 3 adults, and the dips were all from Asda and only needed opening. We did oven chips, which only took 30 minutes from frozen, and had a selection of snacks from Iceland which went in at the same time. The hardest part was chopping the (raw) carrots and cucumber for dipping. Everyone ate when they were hungry and the kids were not moaned at for eating chocolate and sweets before lunch. We all have pretty good appetites but struggled to eat mince pies & cream for afterwards. Easy, cheap and trouble free - what more could you want on Christmas day?

froggy1

this would be an unpopular reply,:D but i bought the entire meal from a well known frozen food outlet and slapped it on the table about 10 years ago,result was: people not impressed:eek:,and hey presto hubby took over the entire christmas dinner operation from buying to cooking :jhe he he i get to load the dishwasher afterwards these days!! shame on me:rotfl:
i will add that we have a buffet on christmas day as no one wants a big dinner and we wait until all family members can be together (work,distance etc) and then we have a family meal and now they are older we all help/hinder my lovely husband:A.

nickyd105

we had fab xmas, usually we go up to my grand-parents, but this time i cooked for us all, 7 of us.
i pre-cooked turkey night before and also prep the veg the night before too.
i also set out the table with crackers and etc the night before.
for starters i did a prawn cocktail.
for the main we had 4 types of veg, stuffing, sausage, pigs in blanket, roasters and gravy was out of a glass jar.
for pudding we had GU rasberry cheesecake baubles. whichcame in there own bauble pot.
the cost of everything on the day for 7 people was £32.50 which is great, that makes it 4.64 per person. think is....the pudding cost £12. so if id used the cake that my mum brought around it would of cost £20.50, which would of made it £2.92 per head.
the plates were piled, there was food left over, infact we managed to get 3 piled dinners out of it for the next day.
i was well made up. i throught it would of been very stressfull and more expensive.
i will defo be doing it again next year for everyone.