Christmas Entertaining Tips & Tricks

For some Christmas time can be stressful when it comes to the food. The key is to remember it’s just another roast dinner with maybe the odd extra trimming.

We’ve asked around the Seasoned team to find their top tips for a fabulous festive feast.

Cover your turkey

Ian Boden – Prep your turkey like normal, the cover turkey tightly with foil. Remove the film 20 minutes before the turkey has finished cooking to allow the skin to crisp up. Cooking you turkey this way helps keeps the juices locked in and means you don’t need to baste it.

Preparation is key

Craig Floate – The obvious answer to this is preparation. Do as much as you can the night before so you can actually relax and enjoy the day instead of stressing over the stove and oven. Things like gravy can be made an frozen in advance along with peeling, chopping and parboiling some of your vegetables like potato, parsnips and carrots. Failing that make sure you do everything with a glass of your favourite tipple in hand!!

Join Craig on his Fish Cookery Course

Share the workload

Steph Clubb – My top tip for Christmas entertaining is when entertaining family and friends, share the workload. If you can, ask them to bring a small tasting one bite platter of something sweet or savoury, these are great handed out as pre-dinner nibbles with drinks. Less for you to do and more time to spend with your guests.

Learn the art of gluten-free baking with Steph on one of our courses. 

Warm your plates

Jules Gilbert – Without sounding too much like my mum, don’t forget to warm the plates; It makes a big difference to how long the food keeps hot for. It’s unlikely you’ll have room in the oven so either put the plates through a quick hot rinse cycle in the dishwasher or blast a pile of plates in the microwave with a bit of water on each plate to warm them through.

Rest……

Yes Christmas should be about taking a rest – for yourself & very importantly for your meat.  Whichever meat you choose for Christmas day it will benefit from being wrapped up in foil & covered with a tea towel or two to allow the protein to relax, the juices to go back into the meat & you to take some time out to finish all the other bits & bobs.  This may also help with oven space if you are cooking for a large crowd.  The amount of time you rest your meat for will depend largely on

Embrace your microwave or slow cooker

Cooker space is at a premium on Christmas day so rather than reheating your Christmas pudding by steaming either reheat in the microwave or pop it in your slow cooker with a few inches of boiling water for for 3 hours on low.

Also consider using your microwave for steaming vegetables. Most microwaves have fresh vegetable settings on them that cook vegetables perfectly.

What top tips do you have to make your Christmas dinner run smoothly?

Happy Christmas from the Seasoned Team 

Xxx