Christmas Dinner: How to Get Your Timings Right

With the festive season already upon us, you may be looking forward to the sumptuous Christmas feast you’ll get to enjoy with your family. But if you’re the one doing the prepping and the cooking, you may be dreading this Christmas dinner more than others, if only because you’re worried about trying to get everything ready at just the right time on Christmas Day.

Don’t panic! We’re here to offer you some simple tips on how to time everything just right on Christmas Day, so you’re not left scrambling minutes before you serve the grub. Read on…

Prepare Sauces, Puddings and Sides Days (or Weeks) in Advance

If you have enough time or you’re planning an exceptionally large dinner, it may be worth your time to begin cooking and prepping dishes days—or even a couple of weeks—in advance. This saves you the hassle of trying to get everything prepared on the day, especially if you have limited space in your kitchen.

This is the option most suited for those with limited time in their days. If you have a packed schedule, you can spread out your Christmas cooking over a few days days—or, once again, weeks, if you have the time. You can store this food either in your fridge or your freezer, to be defrosted on Christmas Eve.

Of course, a Christmas dinner is not complete without a good pudding. Traditional British Christmas pudding is made weeks in advance to allow it to mature, but there’s nothing wrong with making it a few days before Christmas, either.

Christmas Eve Prep

Whether you have an extremely busy schedule or you have all the time in the world, it’s definitely worth doing some prep the night before Christmas, if only to lighten your workload on Christmas day. If you didn’t have time to prepare stuffing days or weeks in advance, doing so on Christmas Eve is an excellent option. Stuffing is a given when cooking your Christmas turkey, because not only can it add flavour, but it can also help avoid serious drying-out of the meat during the cooking process.

(Try out these sausage, sage and onion stuffing and bread and celery stuffing recipes.)

If you did get a chance to cook things in advance, and it’s all sitting in your freezer, now is the time to take them out and defrost them for the morning after. If you didn’t cook in advance, you can cook some simple side dishes on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day Prep

The big day has arrived! While your little ones might have woken up early to open up presents, the early morning is the best time for you to get things ready for the Christmas dinner. This includes heating up dishes you prepared in advanced, as well as putting the turkey into the oven. Allocate at least five or six hours for cooking the turkey, which includes letting the turkey thaw for an hour, preheating the oven for thirty minutes and letting the turkey rest after cooking.

We hope you enjoyed this pre-Christmas blog post. Don’t forget to let us know how you get on with all the prep – and Merry Christmas!

The My Appliances team

Until next time…