You don’t need to set an alarm and put it in at 6am, you don’t need to cook it overnight– around 3 hours will be ample on a low heat from start to finish. Follow the instructions in our free printed Cooking Guide that comes with every order– this will never tell you to cook for 5 hours!.
Long before the big day, get all your roasting trays and place out what you’ll be cooking in them. Maybe this is the time to replace the ones that were on offer in Woolies in 2004 – if it looks like it’s survived a tour of duty strapped to a tank, why cook food in it? If you hurry, you might even be able to make the most of some festive deals.
If you don’t have a sharp knife, sharpen it. If you can’t sharpen it, buy a new knife. £13 knives don’t have to be a once in a lifetime purchase! Even a very cheap knife is good for at least one day – give yourself the gift of effortless carving this year. You will thank yourself no end. Also, AnySharp kitchen countertop sharpeners are cheap and do a great job if you think you can breathe new life into the old set!
Time to get controversial – don’t stuff your turkey with stuffing. Sorry! In my opinion, the best bits of stuffing are crispy tops and edges – maximise this by making stuffing balls or sausages! Turkeys do best with hard herbs (thyme, rosemary, bay) and citrus in the cavity, if anything. Air circulating through a turkey’s carcass helps speed up cooking time and means you’ll get a more even cook through the breast and thigh. Who wants to scrape stuffing out of a screaming hot turkey carcass while everyone else is pulling crackers?
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Another controversial one and it definitely could be a ‘me’ problem – get into your cheeseboard on Christmas Eve. What British household can realistically say they are actively being seduced by their cheeseboard after a day on the booze, the biggest lunch you can fathom and the prospect of puddings and trifles? Spend the afternoon of Christmas eve laying it out, letting it ripen, reading up on the fantastic dairies that have provided you these lactic wonders and get stuck in on an empty stomach with a few pork pies, pickles and cold cuts. While 80% of your brain’s devouring dairy, relishing condiments and snapping crackers, the other 20% can begin to plot. What will you squirrel away for midnight snacks, what will make a wild Christmas sandwich filler (Yarlington, I’ve got my eye on you) and what do you want everyone to completely forget about, so you can retrieve it from the vegetable drawer on the 27th and dive right back in. |
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Make your gravy ahead of time, where possible. I’ve got two packs of carcass, wings and giblets coming with my Christmas order so that I can make my chicken stock base, strain it and chill it and throw this into my turkey giblet gravy on the day. My tip with homemade gravy – skim the fat! Especially with beef gravy! Fat is flavour but it can also mask the wild flavour of sticky gorgeous roast beef stock. Or for something even quicker, try our ready-made Pegoty Hedge gravies for all the flavour without the fuss.
Season everything! Make sure you’ve got lovely flaky sea salt and season your meats once you’ve carved them. Good salt and good seasoning doesn’t make things taste salty, it makes things taste more like their own essence – it provides a foil to set the innate flavour of the product against. Beef gets beefier, pork gets porkier, stuffings and sausages get herbier.
Also, check your sauces before you do your shop for use by dates and whether they’ve been opened! Just because something comes in a glass jar it doesn’t grant it eternal life, especially if it’s the cranberry sauce from Christmas 2022 that tasted a bit tangy in 2023. No surprises, in 2024 the taste will land somewhere between vinegar and clay.
Rest everything– you’ll be surprised how long it holds heat and as long as your gravy’s piping hot, it’ll forgive your pigs in blankets and stuffing balls cooling a few degrees too many while you were trying to pick play-doh out of your nephew’s ear.
Write your shopping list factoring in guests, the 23rd, the 24th, even Boxing day, and all the different plans you have. It doesn’t need to go turkey, stuffing, sausages done – do you want a ham? What about
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