14 steps to Christmas Lunch success
That’s real.
I really did dance to Shake it Off by Taylor Swift on Christmas Day 2014.
There’s video of it.
It’s released online on Christmas Day each year on the one social media account that I have set to private. We don’t all need to see it.
I originally wrote this post on Saturday 17th December 2016. It was last updated in December 2020.
The relevance of the date is that for most you will have done your last ‘Big Shop’ at the supermarket/online before the biggest of all of the ‘Big Shops’. The ‘Christmas Shop’. Granted you might be the sort who adds a little to your list every week in the run up to Christmas, battling then to prevent the household from eating the treats you’ve saved up for Christmas Day, not always successfully. (The Terry’s chocolate orange fell into my mouth, whole. Honest).
However you might shop in the run up to the big day, you will undoubtably have another trip to the supermarket to go / online order to receive so here are my 14 steps to Christmas lunch success.
1. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
Making a multi course and/or multi dish lunch is no mean feat. If you’re not careful the time will slip away, you and/or your guests sozzled before the first roast potato served or worse still, full from the mountain of crisps that they have consumed, leaving no space for your delicious lunch.
First ask yourself whether your time estimates when cooking are accurate? If so, the plan should end 15 minutes before you actually plan to serve lunch to allow for a little bit of slippage. At the other end of the scale, if you are usually woefully inaccurate then the plan should end 45 minutes, perhaps even an hour before you really intend to serve lunch.
Write this plan backwards. Assume 15 minutes to carve your meat and transfer food to serving dishes. If you have one oven check whether you can cook potatoes and anything else that needs to go in there within the time you are going to let the meat rest (at least as long as you cooked it). If that’s insufficient time, then move the meat cooking time back earlier and fit the potatoes and other elements into the new elongated space. If you have the luxury of two ovens then you have a little more room to play with.
Once you have a time plan, stick it to a cupboard door in your kitchen and follow it. Don’t get distracted mid cook to find batteries, tell that story of the time you thought drinking vodka with your nose pinched would stop you getting drunk and then breaking a brick wall, or watch Edmunds as he surprises someone on Christmas Day, stick to the time plan!
2. The lies of ovens
Many years ago, before Eddie Izzard started running a lot, he was very funny. He became less funny for a bit (anyone else watch him at Wembley Arena during the Sexie tour) but the glory of Glorious means that all is forgiven.
Toasters, they lie. Put it on 3, comes out 2. Put it on 4 comes out 6!
Well buckle up Ladies and Gentlemen because within your kitchen is an even bigger liar. Your oven. The temperature dial on your oven ought to have the following next to it:
*Approximately/ish/in that ballpark/might be wildly inaccurate
The lies are so great that were your oven to be brought in for questioning by the Kitchen Constabulary, the interview would take so long that a Superintendent would need to authorise further detention. (One for you Foodie-Criminal Justice nerds out there. I know my audience)
Buy an oven thermometer and look knowingly at your oven as it apologises for at best, misleading you for all these years.
3 Look, prod, cooked?
How do you decide if your turkey is cooked through, or your rib of beef is perfectly medium rare? The conventional wisdom is to:
a) Trust the recommended cooking time (See the lies of ovens, above)
b) Prod with the index finger of wisdom
c) Find a clean knife and stab/slice/hack at it
While all of these can give you a good indication of whether you’ve achieved your desired result they aren’t foolproof and indeed can induce both false positives and negatives.
The secret is to buy a meat thermometer. It’s a sure fire way of knowing whether you are about to poison your guests or not (what you decide to do really is a matter for you) and checking how ‘done’ your meat is. It’s worth remembering that when you remove the bird or joint, the temperature in the centre (which is where you normally check it) will rise by around 10C, all things being equal.
4. Less is more
Christmas is the time to throw caution to the wind and what you want, when you want and most importantly as much as you want. I don’t for a moment want to stop that, but while planning your shopping list and menus, I want you to consider that less is more.
How big is a portion?
We tend to lose perspective at Christmas as to how much people will actually manage to eat at the dinner table. Not helped by supermarkets only selling carrots by the bushel and potatoes by the industrial sack. Cut up a carrot as you would and pile it on a plate. It’s probably more than you think. Of course make sure that you have extra for anyone who wants more, but you won’t end up with a huge pile of uneaten food.
It’s not just a few extra carrots going in the bin, but the space and energy consumed by your fridge to keep them and the extra time and energy to cook them. Multiplied this by everything and it adds up.
Meat and twelve veg
A golden goose or turkey, medium rare rib of beef or even a Turducken will be best showcased on a plate with a few well cooked vegetables instead of twelve insipid boiled bits of fibre. Moreover, the greater the number of accompaniments, the greater the chance of something boiling over or burning. Choose a few things that you can cook well for that perfect Christmas plate.
5. Brine there, done that
Regardless of whether you’ve bought a everyday turkey or one that is organic, free range, black feather, whimsical and liked to play the clarinet of an evening (Hi Trevor, you look like you’ll roast up nicely), the flavour, moisture and texture of your bird will be infinitely improved by brining it. Brine can get a bad name through the association of salty meat. Done poorly and yes, you might end up with a salty bird but done properly, it pays dividends and to an extent, prevents your turkey from drying out.
My brine recipe combines sea salt and dark brown sugar in water just hot enough to dissolve both. Take it off the heat and add a bunch of thyme, parsley and rosemary, a bay leaf, some whole pepercorns and a bashed bulb of garlic. Lastly the rind of a lemon and perhaps even a clementine if you have some hanging around. Place the turkey in a (clean) bucket and submerge in fridge cold brine (make it in advance). Cover the top with a few layers of foil and brine it overnight ready for Christmas Day. On the day itself, remove the turkey in good time (see timings below) and dry it thoroughly as a wet bird won’t crisp in the oven.
6. Timings
If I want to eat at 2pm and my turkey takes 2 hours to cook, I should remove it from my fridge at 11.55, have it in the oven by 12 and carve it at 2pm, shouldn’t I? No. Let’s consider this equation (and substitute turkey for any meat here)
OTT = TTT + PTT + CTT + RTT
TTT = Temperature turkey time. Don’t cook a fridge cold bird as it will take much longer to come up to temperature and not cook for all the time it’s in the oven. A big bird/joint of meat can easily take a couple of hours to come back to room temperature
PTT = Prepare turkey time. You need to factor in time to make spread herb & garlic butter under the skin, stuff the turkey (if you wish, I don’t it just bumps up the cooking time) and anoint it in olive oil before smothering in salt and pepper. Likewise with joint you may want to score the fat and tuck in some herbs.
CTT = Cook turkey time. self-explanatory!
RTT = Rest turkey time. Resting meat is essential. It’s not some ‘Cheffy’ thing that you can ignore but a must to ensure that you turkey or joint is moist and tender. When you cook meat or poultry, the external surfaces receive most of the heat and the moisture retreats to the middle. If you carve it straight away the moisture runs out on your carving board and the meat is dry in parts. I’d recommend resting a turkey or joint for as long as you cook it. Cover a turkey with a piece of foil and a tea towel. With a joint of meat, bear in mind that covering it tightly will continue to increase how well done it is, so take it out one step below you want it (ie rare if you want medium) and cover with a loose tent of foil to keep warm while resting, while preventing it ending up well done.
Factor these elements together to give you OTT, overall turkey time.
7. Use it up
When we think of massive turkeys and joints of meat, the mind can quickly wonder into the next day (or indeed same evening) as the thought of turkey sandwiches comes to the fore.
If you don’t think you are going to eat the entire bird/joint on Christmas Day, don’t carve more than you need. Meat left on the bone and/or in one piece will stay more moist than slices which quickly dry out.
The bones can be put to good use as a hearty stock for soups and risottos.
Dark meat on a turkey: I love it, but not all do. If you have the time, patience and knife skills, I’d suggest using Gordon Ramsay’s recipe and taking the legs off the turkey crown in one piece (one on each side) and roasting the crown separate to the legs. The cooking time will reduce quite dramatically. The legs can either be roasted as is, or the bone removed (along with quite a bit of cartilage) and stuffed with sausage meat and cranberry sauce). Roll up the stuffed leg, wrap tightly with cling film and then foil in a sausage and cook with the crown. You’ll end up with slices of dark meat encasing sausage for an alternative to stuffing that tastes great.
8. Potatoes
I’ve said all I can below in what a friend of mine describes as a
Wonderful love letter to roast potatoes
Click here to read my post on how to make the ultimate roast potato
9. Jean-Claude Van Damme good Brussels Sprouts
The humble sprout get a bad wrap. A cross stuck in its bottom that makes it waterlogged as gets boiled to within an inch of its life. The aroma of the kitchen heady with what smells like a potent nappy from a teething child. The sprout needs a makeover.
There are plenty of recipes out there. The sprouts best friends are garlic, smoked bacon, lardons, croquetas de jamon (off cuts of jamon), chestnuts and direct heat. Cook the pork until it leaches out its fat, add sliced garlic and then add the sprouts either whole, halved or sliced thinly like cabbage. Get some colour on them and then add a splash of white wine or water, pop a lid on and let them steam a little. No Retreat, No Surrender, just great sprouts.
10. It’s all gravy
How much gravy do you need? Well, it depends on whether your guests like to drink it by the pint, or just want something to moisten their plate. If it’s the former then I suggest you buy a 10 person soup tureen, fill it with gravy granules and several kettles full of water.
If you want to take the stress out of gravy and have a little of space in your budget then I recommend pots of pre-made gravy and Waitrose in particular.
But if you have the time then make your own gravy base the day before. Put about 1kg of chicken wings in a roasting pan with two onions cut in 8 pieces, a couple of carrots and ribs of celery, roughly chopped into 6–8 pieces. Pour over a little olive oil and use your hands to make sure it is all well coated. Roast at 200C for an hour, mixing a couple of times in between. After an hour put the roasting pan on the hob.
If you like a bit of booze in your gravy, add a glass of sherry, port or Madeira at this point and use it help scrape the sticky goodness from the bottom of the pan. As you do this, use a wooden spoon to break up the chicken wings and vegetables so that they turn into a thick mash. Cook until the liquid is reduced by half. (If you don’t want to use alcohol then a wine glass of water will do the trick at this stage).
Next, add 1.5-2L of cold water and a bunch of herbs. I like to add parsley, thyme and a little bit of rosemary. Careful with the latter. Too much and it will overpower. Simmer for about 20 minutes, skimming the fat from the top and you will have a dark gravy base. Don’t simmer it for too long or the contents will stew instead of infuse.
Pour the base into a clean container and refrigerate. When you want to make your gravy, take the pan you’ve roasted your turkey in and remove the fat, leaving behind the roasting juices. Deglaze the roasting pan with a little white wine (or water) and add the turkey base. Simmer for 5–10 minutes to let the flavours combine. Correct the seasoning and if you want a little sweet kick to it, add in a tablespoon of cranberry jelly. For a warm kick, a tablespoon of dijon mustard. Serve immediately.
11. Christmas pudding
There are two types of people. Those who like Christmas pudding and those who are wrong. Some of those people who are wrong might darken your door. Feed them something else. If they really deserve it, Sticky Toffee Pudding from the one and only Cartmel Village Shop. If they don’t like that, ask them to leave. Enjoy a slice or seven of Christmas pudding liberally lubricated with double cream. The following day, fry streaky bacon and set to one side. Quickly fry slices of Christmas pudding in the bacon fat, turn on the Greatest Hits of Elvis and enjoy.
12. Hertfordshire Puddings
No, not my nickname at school (It was ‘Captain’) but a response to the reaction from Yorkshire to both (a) my Yorkshire pudding recipe and (b) eating them with anything other than roast beef. It reminded me of a favourite quote:
You can tell a Yorkshireman, but you can’t tell him much
I bring you therefore, Hertfordshire puddings. This makes 6–8 depending on how big you want them to be. Take a cupcake tin, muffin tray or Yorkshire pudding tin and put it into a bigger roasting dish. Without the bigger roasting pan you’ll end up with cooking oil in the bottom of your oven. Fill each cupcake/muffin hole almost half way up with rapeseed oil or something with a similarly high smoking point. Put the tin in dish arrangement into the oven at 230C and leave them there for at least 15 minutes so that the oil is shimmering hot.
In a large bowl whisk 2 eggs with 150ML of milk and 150ML of cold water. Add a teaspoon of dijon mustard and the picked leaves from a few stalks of thyme. Whisk together. Then sift in 130g of plain flour and whisk until smooth. It should resemble the consistency of double cream. Pour the mixture into a jug to aid with the next step.
Have the jug of batter next to the oven and remove the roasting dish closing the oven door to keep the heat in. Quickly pour the batter into each hole. You want to fill each hole almost to the top in one fluid motion. The batter should splutter and fry immediately in the hot fat. Get the pan back into the oven quickly shutting the door gently to avoid blowing in a gust of cold air. Cook for 25–30 minutes until well risen and golden.
13. Wine, Fizz but importantly, Sherry
Try a light red (French Pinot Noir or one from New Zealand) with Turkey instead of white.
Remember that many of the supermarket own label champagne and sparkling wine is as good as the usual named brand non-vintage bottles.
My top tip however is to drink dry sherry cold from the fridge. Palo Cortado is my current favourite variety with a wonderful balance of rich and crisp with a beautiful golden colour. The Waitrose own brand is £10 a bottle and worth a try.
14. You
Cooking at Christmas can be stressful. Enjoy a glass of wine while you cook but remember you’re in charge of the kitchen so drink more water than wine until you serve up. Then go wild and remind everyone else they are doing the dishes. If like me you are prone to pick at food as you cook it, have a box of crackers nearby to satisfy your hunger. My cracker of choice is the big sheets of Matzo crackers.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and enjoy your lunch,
Ishan