Have you ever felt overwhelmed at the thought of feeding many mouths on Christmas day? Well I’m here to tell you it does not have to be stressful… let me tell you how!
Christmas Dinner Preparations have started at Organised Wright HQ, but how far in advance is too far in advance?! If anything, this is late for us!
First things first, your freezer is your best friend. Utilised correctly, you can save so much time and money very easily and you DO NOT need to compromise on quality! I bet when you think of freezer food, you instantly think ready made crap… but it doesn’t have to be that way!
Freezers can be used for all sorts of stress busting meal prep and you dont need to make it before you freeze it… in fact, I’m not a huge fan of ready made meals from the freezer even when I’ve made them myself… its never the same as making something fresh! I actually prefer to freeze meat fresh and uncooked as it lasts way longer.
Did you know that you can refreeze meat AS LONG AS you cook it first?! This means you can bulk buy meat, make a batch cook and refreeze that batch cook! Totally irrelevant to Christmas dinner but an interesting fact all the same
Soooo back to Christmas dinner! About 7 or 8 years ago I was reading the free magazine from the tills at tesco and I stumbled across a schedule for making Christmas dinner in advance… we decided we had nothing to lose so we tried it out and honestly, we couldn’t tell the difference except for one crutial thing… Mam wasn’t stressed! We’ve perfected it to suit our family over the years but one thing remains the same… no one is stressed, everyone eats on time and everyone gets to enjoy the day … and thats what really matters!
You can even utilise these tips all year round, and we quite frequently do. Living in a house with only 2 adults, it’s absolutely impossible to eat a variety of fresh veg without something going off in the fridge – unless you utilise your freezer!
What do you need;
- Disposable Foil Trays – I pick these up all year round from the big supermarkets and bargain stores, but after some mixing around I have found that asda’s fit best in my oven and are freezer safe but you can also get them from Morrison’s, B&M, amazon and many of the wholesaler stores.
- XL food bags from Tesco are the perfect size to fit the foil trays inside and can be washed and reused a few times.
So without any further waffling here’s how we do it!
3 months before
- Make a freezer audit and chuck away anything old
- Start running down supplies to make space and maybe make a meal plan (dont have to assign it to each day) of recipes that uses up ALL the current supplies – this time of year is so busy that you’ll be grateful that you’ve not got to think about “what can I make”
- Start buying sauces and cupboard ingrediants like seafood sauce, cranberry, gravy powder, stuffing, herbs etc. as you see them on offer as they will usually have good dates… but do check them first!
- If you make a christmas cake this can be done now too if you’re freezing it or feeding with booze.
4-6 weeks before – Meat
Fresh meat can be bought and frozen (check the labels first) months in advance – so the Turkey crown and gammon are bought and head straight to the freezer. Defrost these a few days before for preparaion
Next the pigs in blankets, we make using fresh bacon and chipolata’s. Thus year I’m also testing pre-latticing the bacon… but usually we just freeze it in its pack. We keep a couple of spare chipolatas to enhance the stuffing with too!
4 weeks to go – Potatoes
This is something I do with most bags of potatoes as we never ever finish a bag before they go off!
Mash – personally, I like to cook and mash them on the day HOWEVER there are loads of recipes online for how to do them in advance. I personally like to peel and cut the potatoes, then parboil, cool, bag and freeze… that way I feel they stay hot on your plate longer. Its all about personal preference!
Roasties – again peel and chop, parboil, drain and bash them. I like to add goose fat to the pan and make sure they are evenly coated, then spinkle on a foil tray, bag and freeze. This way they come out of the freezer and go straight into the oven.
2-4 weeks before – Vegetables
I find veg can get freezer burn veg quickly if frozen or parboiled too long so I start with more hardy veg, like parsnips and carrots, as they stand up to being frozen longer a lot better and leave more sensitive veg like asparagus, tenderstem brocolli until closer to Christmas.
Theres lots of tips online about how long to blanche before freezing… usually each veg only needs a few minutes in boiling water before submersing in ice water then frozen on a tray. Once its frozen, you can bag this too so it takes up less freezer space… which is also another great reason to do this in stages.
Like I say, there are lots of guides online about how long to boil things for but this year I’m going to follow a super pretty chart available to download from My Frugal Home amd will let you know how I get on!
48 hours before
Start defrosting your meat. Couole of food safe options- either deforst in the fridge or alternatively you can pop it into a sink full of cold water, changing the water every 30 mins until defrosted then pop it into the fridge until needed.
24 hours before
Time to get the potatoes and veg out of the freezer, check on the meat to make sure its defrosted.
Sone people like to slow cook their meat overnight, others prefer popping it in the over early in the morning. I’ll leave the cooking preferences to you!
One thing you can do is make yourself a little timetable to work from (and you can do this well before if you want to) so that you’re not running round and don’t forget anything… we’ve all been in that boat where you forget the parsnips in the airfryer until after the meal is finished… or forget something entirely!
How I do this is working backwards from the time you want to eat, calculate your turkey cooking and resting time. Then the roasties… they always take longer than you think so start them 1.5 hours before. After that its just a glorified sunday dinner! If you’ve used the foil trays, I can fit 2 of those side by side on a shelf but you should check your oven. Dont forget you can always keep things warm once they are cooked!
On the big day…
With the big day here, all you should need to do is supervise or prep anything last minute like stuffing or starters but it should be pretty plain sailing thanks to all of the preo
Now you’ve got all the tips and tricks, get yourself off and be your future selfs friend! Batch preparing will change your life! Let us know over on socials how you get on!
Jo-Anne x