Christmas cooking

beertons

I'm doing the dinner this year. Bazmo's stuffing balls, will have these prepped shortly, and put in the freezer. Boned and rolled turkey, boiled in chicken stock. No waste, no messing with bones, it can be sliced up immediately, and easily stored. I steamed potatoes and carrots last time, I think I'll do same again. Roast potatoes in goose fat. I'll get giblets off the butcher for the gravy too. I used to do shallots and pancheta with green beans, but I found before that it was a bit much, with another ham dish on the plate. Plate needs green though, so a small pot of sprouts should do the trick.

And I'm smoking a ham in the Kamado Joe. I'll be up early, might as well make use of my time.

6 adults as 2 kids. I don't do starters, eat more dinner.

What you doing? Where you going? How many?

Gloomtastic!

Is there a word for drooling with excitement in anticipation of the biggest culinary event of the year?

Whispered

2 adults, one young child. We usually have a starter, I think this year we will skip it in favour of a more casual type of meal with the little fella free to come and go.

I'm gonna leave the turkey and ham to my husband (so I can't be blamed for dry meat). We are a "several types of potato" household! Creamy mash, roasties and either croquettes or dauphinois. Side of roast carrots and roast sprouts. I'll also make a quorn roast for myself and a nut roast for a bit of choice.

Dessert.... haven't decided yet. Ideally something I can make in advance. With caramel and chocolate! Suggestions appreciated!

That night leftover veg and nut roast will be chopped, stir fried, have blue cheese sprinkled in and served between slices of batch with real butter and a packet of crisps.

Dial Hard

We never do starters or dessert in our (well, my mam's) house.

We start with a champagne breakfast about 10am. Visitors usually start arriving about 1 or 2 and there'll be brown bread (mine) and smoked salmon throughout the day. 18 of us for dinner, which will be turkey, ham, mash, roasters, stuffing, carrots, carrot & parsnip mash, sprouts, peas, green beans, gravy and cranberry sauce (also mine). We usually eat about 7pm, there'll be cheese for anyone who wants it about 10pm and then turkey/ham sandwiches with Branston pickle on fresh Brennans bread with real butter at around 1am, to refresh us after several hours of charades/Heads Up/Speak Out. Then off to bed with everyone!

Breakfast on Stephenseseseses Day is ALWAYS slices of the ham, fried, with eggs and mustard. Delish!

Neyite

It's the one day a year I do the works. We are up early 'cos of Santa, so around 10 or so I generally do breakfast - I did baked eggs one year and wasn't keen, but last year I did mince-pie pastries and they were nice, but I might go hunting for a nice breakfast recipe idea that I can make a tradition of in our house. Breakfast in our gaff usually includes prosecco for me.

I do a starter - usually a seafood one - so scallops or tuna carpaccio, followed by venison & port wine sauce with roasties & garlic potatoes, brussel sprouts, red cabbage, carrot batons and roast parsnip, and of course stuffing balls. Dessert is a home-made trifle with each layer made from scratch. It's time consuming but blows the packet versions out of the water.

I must start on my preserves and my Christmas cakes next month.

Maldesu

Christmas in my house can be an ordeal at times.
Usually it's me, the parents, brother, his wife and 2 kids.

Me and mum usually try to reduce the food amounts, wheras the brother is trying increase it - an ongoing battle.

This is typical for us:
1 - Soup - veggie;
2 -smoked salmon and prawn with brown bread;
3 - Turkey, ham, boiled spuds, cabbage, another veg, roast spuds, gravey, bread/herb stuffing, meat stuffing, pigs in blankets and 'other item' (or whatever by brother is trying out this year)
4 - Sherry Trifle
5 - Christmas pudding

Most is made from scratch, with the exception of the sponge for the trifle. Cake and pudding will be getting started in the next few weeks.
Ham is a 3 day process.
Sherry trifle is started the day before
Soup is done the night before.
Turkey is usually put on at 6/7 am depending on weight.
Bloody Mary's usually at 10am.

Naturally, we all argue with each other for the weeks before and right up to the main course

Dizzyblonde

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Is there a word for drooling with excitement in anticipation of the biggest culinary event of the year?

Yuledrool! :pac:

TheShow

Stumbled upon a different take on sprouts a few years back. I love them as they are, but this way they're even better again!

Boil them as normal, in the meantime make a nice mornay sauce and a lemon & parsley pangratatto. Put spouts into baking dish, pour over sauce and cover with the pangratatto. Bake in the oven until golden and crisp on the top.

Show restraint by no eating them all before they get to the table. :-)

Happy_Lady

TheShow wrote: »

Stumbled upon a different take on sprouts a few years back. I love them as they are, but this way they're even better again!

Boil them as normal, in the meantime make a nice mornay sauce and a lemon & parsley pangratatto. Put spouts into baking dish, pour over sauce and cover with the pangratatto. Bake in the oven until golden and crisp on the top.

Show restraint by no eating them all before they get to the table. :-)

*DROOL FACE*

Toots

We go to my parents for Christmas dinner but feeling bereft of leftovers when we return back to our place, we did our own turkey and ham last year, purely for leftover purposes

So for me the prep will start on the 23rd when I'll be brining my turkey and the ham (in separate pots)

Then on Christmas eve, we go down to my parents house, where my Mum, my sisters, my little boy and I all start making the stuffing. During this time, my turkey will be in the oven in my apartment and the hubby will nip up and down to check on it. The ham will be in the oven in my Mum's so I can keep an eye on it while doing the stuffing. My job is chopping the onions and celery because I'm the only one who can chop fine enough without losing fingers. We use the stork stuffing recipe and usually do 4x the quantity (I take home a portion for us to cook) My sisters and son do the dry ingredients, and Mum supervises and generally makes sure we don't burn the house down. She also wipes my eyes of the inevitable onion tears. Once all the ingredients are in the giant bowl, there will be several tastings to make sure it's perfect, then it's set aside to wait to be formed into balls and cooked on Christmas day. Then we have chipper :pac:

Christmas morning we're up early for Santa, and then for breakfast we make little sandwiches with toast and scrambled egg and smoked salmon. Usually we wouldn't eat anything between then and dinner to make sure there's room to gorge ourselves Dinner on Christmas day will be about 3pm and will consist of turkey, ham, homemade cranberry sauce (courtesy of my sister's boyfriend), an obscene amount of stuffing balls, roast and creamed potatoes, the rashers that are cooked on the turkey, bread sauce, gravy, peas, carrot and parsnips and sprouts. Then dessert will be Christmas pudding, custard, meringues, peaches in brandy and fresh cream on the side. Later that night when we go home, we'll probably eat some of our own turkey and ham and stuffing, and then fall into a food coma.

Stephen's day is a buffet of cold cuts and leftovers and various homemade chutneys to go on the side, then usually one of the days in between then and NYE my mum does a seafood day as well. Now I'm off to wipe the drool off my keyboard.

Dial Hard

Neyite wrote:

I must start on my preserves and my Christmas cakes next month.

That reminds me, must put out the annual call for Kilner jars to be returned to me.

I operate on a gas cylinder basis with family, if they don't return an empty they don't get a refill

Toots

Dial Hard wrote: »

That reminds me, must put out the annual call for Kilner jars to be returned to me.

I operate on a gas cylinder basis with family, if they don't return an empty they don't get a refill

That's only fair!.

I've a mad craving for turkey now after reading this thread.

LirW

We've started talking about it recently.
Last years Christmas was a disaster, we've been with my In-laws and they both can't really cook but we also had our own plans and I ended up saving their Turkey, ham, got into a fight with MIL because she got mad that her brother called her out on not making the gravy on their own and using store-bought instead. Also half of my food got thrown out by "accident". Now a few months later I can laugh about it.
But now we're in our own house and we merge Christmas traditions. Basically the time-line will be the Irish one, the food Austrian. In AUT we'd celebrate on the 24th in the evening - a pain when you have kids.

It all starts in early December with producing tons, and I mean TONS of christmas cookies (Weihnachtsbaeckerei). You'd do a few different kinds, a classic would be the vanilla half-moons and stack them in cake tins. You live off that for weeks and since they are everything but light you'll get fat by eating like a handful of them. The upside is that you have the smell of baking in your house for a month straight.
The old traditional food for Christmas eve would be either Carp (disgusting because Carps tend to taste like mud when they lived in lakes) or goose.
I won't be doing either. I'm not a fan of Irish Christmas food (sorry folks!) and my man is happy that he only gets to eat the cold cuts.

We will have some simple starter, maybe a light salad because there will be loads of food after that.
A few days before Christmas I start to prepare the red cabbage, usually 3 days before. It's red cabbage shredded cooked down in water and red wine with a few spices. You let it sit and maybe warm it once or twice because it gets better with every warming. Nice earthy side that adds the fanciest pop of colour.
Last year we had a pork roast, it's loin with crispy crackling. You make a marinade out of olive oil, spices and herbs and let it sit in it for a few hours. Then it gets mounted on root vegetables and pour a bit of water in and put in in the oven for the adequate time.
Got a rack of it in Fallon&Byrnes piss cheap last December because nobody buys pork for Christmas. You can make rice, you'd eat a few of the veggies that are in the tray, have the red cabbage and maybe do some breadroll dumplings.
You wouldn't make a gravy because you simply use the drippings of the roast as sauce, it's beyond gorgeous.

Not sure what we do this year, the man mumbled something about lamb. So maybe it'll be a lamb shank if I get a nice piece of meat.

We then would live off the leftovers for a day or two plus the cookies and biscuits.
New year's eve is a big deal again, we'd either have Fondue (don't want with the baby around) or Raclette. Had Raclette last year and it's great fun.

After all of that I have a year to lose the weight to start the vicious circle again.

the beer revolu

Toots, you brine your ham???
You must really like salt!

Toots

the beer revolu wrote: »

Toots, you brine your ham???
You must really like salt!

Well it's called 'brine' but I don't actually add salt, because I figure the ham is salty enough. I'd barely tolerate ham, will only eat a token amount at Christmas, but my husband loves it so I make one. The brine recipe I use is:

Fill a large pot with water (leaving enough room to add the ham) then add:
1 large onion, chopped into large bits
3 celery sticks, cut in large bits
2-4 tbsp honey
Salt & Pepper (I leave out the salt)
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp allspice
Handful of sage
Fresh rosemary
2 veg stock cubes (or if you're being fancy, 2 pints veg stock)
1 to 2 tsp cloves

Then you stick it on the hob and bring it to the boil to make sure all the flavours start to join together. Let it boil for a minute or two, then take it off the hob and let it cool down completely until it's at room temp - you can set the pot in the sink or you could chuck a whole pile of ice cubes in there to cool it quicker. Then plonk the ham in and refrigerate for 24 hours. Then I'd do a honey glaze and stick the cloves in the skin and roast the ham in the oven.

BaZmO*

This will be the first year that we’ll be doing everything at home. Normally we’d go to her parents on Christmas Eve for dinner as is their tradition, which is a total pain if you have kids as a previous poster has stated, and then we’d either go to my parents on Christmas Day or have family over. Having people over is always a panic because the night before kinda kills any opportunity to do any prep.

So this year to save any hassle, mainly due to having another little mouth to feed, we’re doing everything at home. So it’ll be strictly prep on the Christmas Eve, while the eldest, who is 4, watches Christmas films on TV and then have her parents over on Christmas Day. It’s actually the most I’ve been looking forward to Christmas in years!

the beer revolu

Toots wrote: »

Well it's called 'brine' but I don't actually add salt, because I figure the ham is salty enough. I'd barely tolerate ham, will only eat a token amount at Christmas, but my husband loves it so I make one. The brine recipe I use is:

Fill a large pot with water (leaving enough room to add the ham) then add:
1 large onion, chopped into large bits
3 celery sticks, cut in large bits
2-4 tbsp honey
Salt & Pepper (I leave out the salt)
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp allspice
Handful of sage
Fresh rosemary
2 veg stock cubes (or if you're being fancy, 2 pints veg stock)
1 to 2 tsp cloves

Then you stick it on the hob and bring it to the boil to make sure all the flavours start to join together. Let it boil for a minute or two, then take it off the hob and let it cool down completely until it's at room temp - you can set the pot in the sink or you could chuck a whole pile of ice cubes in there to cool it quicker. Then plonk the ham in and refrigerate for 24 hours. Then I'd do a honey glaze and stick the cloves in the skin and roast the ham in the oven.

I hope you don't mind me suggesting something to save you a load of trouble and give you similar results.
Make up your "brine" as usual but cook your ham in it (look up boiling times for ham) then glaze it in the oven. I can pretty much guarantee that no one will tell the difference between that and a baked ham. I wouldn't even bother "brineing" the ham overnight - cooking the ham from cold with the spices and veg will impart plenty of flavour.

The way you are doing it seems like a lot of trouble for no real benefit over what I'm suggesting. I've no doubt that how you do it turns out really great. I also have no doubt that how I'm suggesting doing it would be equally great!

Toots

the beer revolu wrote: »

I hope you don't mind me suggesting something to save you a load of trouble and give you similar results.
Make up your "brine" as usual but cook your ham in it (look up boiling times for ham) then glaze it in the oven. I can pretty much guarantee that no one will tell the difference between that and a baked ham. I wouldn't even bother "brineing" the ham overnight - cooking the ham from cold with the spices and veg will impart plenty of flavour.

The way you are doing it seems like a lot of trouble for no real benefit over what I'm suggesting. I've no doubt that how you do it turns out really great. I also have no doubt that how I'm suggesting doing it would be equally great!

The reason I do it in the oven is because there's no free hob space to boil it in the mixture :pac: My Mum does a ham for two of my aunts, so they're on the boil on Christmas eve, and then the other two rings are used for cooking the veg for the stuffing. Mum boils her ham like that, but she puts it in on Christmas morning and it's all cooked before the dinner veg go on, and then the glaze gets done in the oven while the turkey is resting. Tis a military operation!

Dial Hard

I actually don't like baked ham, much prefer it just boiled.

I see Lidl have all their Christmas biscuits and chocolate in this week. It's so frickin early!

LirW

Finally the Dominos are back!

Toots

Dial Hard wrote: »

I actually don't like baked ham, much prefer it just boiled.

I see Lidl have all their Christmas biscuits and chocolate in this week. It's so frickin early!

I'm waiting til they get those 4 bird roasts and then I'm gonna stock up on them! I always do one of those for the day my hubby and son finish up for Christmas hols. I'd do it kinda thanksgiving style in that I'd do the mashed sweet potatoes with mallows on the top and then sprouts pan fried with pancetta and pine nuts. It's always a nice way to start the hols, even though the youngling invariably refuses to eat it :pac:

the beer revolu

Toots wrote: »

The reason I do it in the oven is because there's no free hob space to boil it in the mixture :pac: My Mum does a ham for two of my aunts, so they're on the boil on Christmas eve, and then the other two rings are used for cooking the veg for the stuffing. Mum boils her ham like that, but she puts it in on Christmas morning and it's all cooked before the dinner veg go on, and then the glaze gets done in the oven while the turkey is resting. Tis a military operation!

Ah, it all makes sense now.

TheKBizzle

I do my ham in the slow cooker covered in orange juice with a star anise and a few cloves thrown in, then a honey and mustard glaze and into the oven for 15 minutes. It's amazing

B0jangles

Every time I see this thread it reminds me that I really need to get going with making the Christmas cake in the very near future , so thanks thread!

Maldesu

B0jangles wrote: »

Every time I see this thread it reminds me that I really need to get going with making the Christmas cake in the very near future , so thanks thread!

Me and mum did one last night! :pac:
Might do a second one if I get time. Got to try for the pudding too

Colonel Claptrap

Has anybody ever tried a goose at Christmas?

Would you recommend it?

LirW

I did and I didn't like it. I didn't think it's a particularly nice flavor and they can be quite fat.

Maldesu

^^^ Same as. Is very fatty and you have to cut down quite a bit to get to the meat iirc.

Shenshen

Colonel Claptrap wrote: »

Has anybody ever tried a goose at Christmas?

Would you recommend it?

It's the traditional thing in Germany, so I had it regularly growing up. I wouldn't any more, as I don't eat meat any more, but I remember it as something very nice.
Very crispy skin, and unlike turkey the meat has a taste to it, a bit gamey. It works really well with all traditional christmas spicing, such as cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and star anis.

B0jangles

Colonel Claptrap wrote: »

Has anybody ever tried a goose at Christmas?

Would you recommend it?

We've done goose a couple of times and on the plus side it's a nice flavour, definitely more interesting than turkey and the traditional sides like prunes and armagnac are lovely, but on the negative, a goose does not scale up like a turkey does, so it's not a good choice if you're feeding more than 4-6 people - basically they max out meat-wise at a fairly low weight (I'm guessing 8-10 pounds?) and any extra weight on top of that is just going to be fat which will melt out when it cooks. The other problem I had was the mess - they are so fatty that it just splatters everywhere when you're opening the oven to baste/check the temp

B0jangles

Maldesu wrote: »

Me and mum did one last night! :pac:
Might do a second one if I get time. Got to try for the pudding too

I always used to cook the cake with my mum too I've kind of taken over now because I like to potter around doing things in my own way and she's more a fan of cake eating than cake baking. Also, the kenwood chef is an absolute joy to have for christmas cake making - I get to leave the butter/sugar to cream by itself while I sieve flour and chop fruit - bliss!