Prepare for a feast of festive food: Christmas kitchen tips from our favourite chefs
Christmas - the one day of the year when even the most reluctant of chefs roll up their sleeves and attempt to make a feast fit for a king. Here, some of our favourite cooks divulge the dishes they’ll be serving up this year and their top tips to guarantee success and avoid pinning your hopes on a Christmas miracle - and it’s all about prep. Start early, draft in help, and make sure the cook gets a hug after all that hard work (thanks Darina). Plus, they share the long-standing Christmas traditions in their home and offer some guidance on what to gift the foodie in your life this Yuletide.
Ham, turkey, brussel sprouts with bacon, chestnuts, roast carrots with honey and butter, red cabbage, stuffing - it’s a very traditional Christmas dinner. For dessert we generally do a big, big pavlova in the centre of the table, there’s always a Christmas cake, plum pudding with brandy cream.
Be prepared - and that comes from working in restaurants most of my life. If ten people walk into a restaurant for dinner you don’t suddenly start chopping the carrots. When someone comes into a restaurant and orders, you’re generally putting things together towards the end of finishing things off, you’re not starting from scratch from when they walk in the doors. I’ve translated that into how I cook at home, particularly at Christmas. There’s usually 12 of us for Christmas dinner and we’re good at getting everything organised the night before so there’s not too much on Christmas morning. You want to spend time with people on Christmas day, not washing potatoes. The day before, or even the day before that, I do most of the prep, I have all the potatoes washed, the carrots chopped, the stuffing is made, the plum pudding is made, the Christmas cake is made. You don’t want Christmas morning to be a panic, and cooking for a group it can be, so be prepared.
Santa comes in the morning obviously, but we usually wait to open all our own gifts until just before dinner, so we have the dinner in the oven, the smells of dinner around the kitchen, everything is kind of settled and everyone is relaxed. We all sit down and open a bottle of something and then we sit and open the presents then. And that's the real family moment every year.
It depends on the budget, but if you have a big budget, there are some amazing Irish-made knives. Having a proper set of knives in your kitchen to me is imperative.Trying to chop with a blunt knife makes me cry. There's Fingal Ferguson Knives in West Cork, they make amazing knives, there’s also Dunn Bladeworks in Glengarriff. They're just two examples. That’s a high enough budget but if it's for someone special - you can’t get much better. I recently got an Aarke for making fizzy water. It’s really slick and looks really nice in the kitchen. It’s not cheap either, but it’s brilliant. From a sustainability level, I’ve found it really good and I think it would be a great gift for someone.
We have been cooking a similar dinner every year for the last 20 years. Our starter is a smoked salmon tart made with salmon, dill, crème frâiche, shallots and lemon zest served with Champagne - probably Ruinart Blanc de Blancs. The main course is likely to be a Bronze turkey and boiled ham with the usual trimmings - a bread-based stuffing, roast, mashed and croquette potatoes, carrots and sprouts. Only her good self will be eating the sprouts, I don't hate them but they bring me little pleasure. One thing that’s different to most people I suspect is we always have Kimchi. Kimchi has entered our Christmas meal thanks to several charming Korean students who have stayed with us over the years - we often have waifs and strays at the Christmas table as we rent a bedroom to English Language Students. Kimchi, because it’s such a strong, pungent thing, is a really good contrast to the blandness of turkey. Dessert is a traditional Christmas Pudding served with Port - Vintage Port or 10 Year Old Tawny Port as the mood takes me on the day.
Gravy. Never underestimate the power of gravy. Buy extra turkey legs to make a rich stock.
We always have champagne and good sausages for breakfast. We don’t watch TV on Christmas Day, if there’s something we want to watch, I’ll tape it. If there’s people in the house, dancing sometimes happens. If it is just myself, my wife and son we might play Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble although I'm told I'm far too competitive.
Good wine glasses. Zalto (Searsons.com) is my current favourite but I also recommend Riedel (Mitchellandson.com). If they are a non-drinker a microplane grater is essential to every kitchen. One you use one of them, you’ll never use another grater again. My most-prized kitchen possessions are my knifes. A handcrafted knife is a perfect gift because it’ll last for 50 or 100 years.
We have a very traditional Christmas dinner. Turkey, ham, Tom Durcan's spiced beef, and all the trimmings, potatoes, gravy, stuffing. My husband cooks the turkey and makes a very fancy stuffing which we have once a year, just for Christmas. For dessert, I like a dessert medley because different people like different things. I’ll usually have some chocolate cake and ice-cream, mince pies, and a cheeseboard.
Do as much as you possibly can beforehand and have the least amount to do on Christmas Day. I do so little actual cooking on Christmas, it's all organised in advance. It's all about prep. Make a list for yourself with the timings for the day and just keep it really simple. Christmas dinner is the one meal that you can do so much in advance and just make your life as easy as possible on the day, it shouldn't be stressful.
We try to always get out for a family walk on Christmas day. It’s such a weird day, we usually go from opening presents and the kids going mad to wrapping them up in their cosiest clothes and bringing them out to the beach, they get into their Christmas Day outfits when they get home.
I think some kind of delivery service for January would be a lovely one. For coffee lovers, there’s an Irish company called 3fe and they do a subscription where you can get a different bag of coffee every month. I think that would be a really thoughtful gift. A nice mug is another one. We have a mug section in our shop and they always fly out the door.
Christmas is a very special time of the year, and although I love seeing the restaurants filled to the brim with happy guests, I do enjoy spending Christmas Day at home with my family. On the day itself, we’ll roast a goose and use all that lovely fat to cook the roast potatoes. Goose fat roasties are just the best. Gravy is, of course, homemade along with an apple and cranberry compote. There will also be a gammon joint steaming over aromats filling the air with its wonderful scent.
Keep your vegetables to a minimum, maybe one or two root vegetables max, this will save on hob space and also on washing up. Keep them whole, and once your roast potatoes have turned nice and crisp, throw in your partly cooked veg to the same roasting tin. The caramelisation will give them extra flavour and it makes plating up so much easier.
At 11am we serve Champagne and seafood. This happens every single year and it’s a Corrigan Christmas tradition I love dearly. Some Bentley’s smoked salmon which we smoked on the roof of the restaurant, prawns and Cornish dressed crab with a crisp glass of fizz. Bliss!
They’re not cheap but a decent chef’s knife is the ultimate gift for a foodie - and it will last a lifetime if you give it some love and care. Japan produces some of the finest knives in the world, Sakai Takayuki Gyuto, in particular, is great. If you’re looking for similar quality with superb craftsmanship made in the UK, then the folks at Blenheim Forge are making rather special knives inspired by Japanese knife making traditions.
We have been cooking a vegan Christmas dinner for all our family for the last five years. Even our aunt and uncle who aren't vegan love it. Normally Dave, me, our brothers and cousins head down to the kitchen in The Happy Pear and we bake some sourdough, make an old school chunky vegan oxtail style soup, cook a vegan wellington, lots of roasted veg, tartlets, gravy, cranberry sauce and make a few cakes too. It's always a big vegan feast that we all adore.
Prepare ahead of time and even do a trial run. A vegan wellington normally takes under an hour to make and it makes a wonderful centre piece meal with gravy, roasted veg and crispy roast potatoes. The filling can be made weeks ahead of time. Freeze it and then just take it out and let it thaw in the fridge the night before. Wrap it in pastry and bake.
We have a big family get together. Our aunt and uncle Orna and Ned, and cousins Al and Paul from Cork all come up to mom and dads for Christmas. We have a big get together and we swim in the sea around noon. Some years there can be well over 1000 people and it's a fun community event. Then we come back to mom and dads and cook a vegan feast for 20. We laugh and have fun and finish the day with a lovely walk.
Over the last four years I have gotten into making my own bean to bar chocolate, which is such a beautiful process. Like wine or specialty coffee there is a huge difference depending on where and how the cacao was grown, fermented, roasted and then made. I often think of it as mindful chocolate as when you understand more of the story as to where it was grown and processed and what flavour notes to expect it can be a fun process really savouring the notes and trying to guess is it more notes of plum, raspberry, malt or vanilla? There are more and more bean to bar chocolate makers popping up and most people love a good bar of chocolate so I think that would make a great gift.
I stopped cooking turkey some years ago. At one stage I was cooking for up to 16 and it made sense then but it's a smaller group now - family groups evolving and then the pandemic - and I secretly detested the inevitable turkey curry to use up leftovers. There’s always at least one vegetarian, so alongside my legendary nut roast encased in shortcrust pastry, adored by all, blood-smeared carnivores included, I’ve served goose, prime beef and even two superb and very large roast chickens, the size of small ponies, from Tom Clancy of Ballycotton Free Range. And always sprouts, one of my most favourite vegetables!
Wangle an invitation to someone else’s and get stuck into the champagne at breakfast time? Naw, plan, two or three weeks ahead, like you’re Ceasar invading Gaul. Itemise the complete menu, listing all the steps that have to be done with each item, large and small, then create a timetable for when each step must happen. Beg, borrow or steal three or four picnic cooler boxes and a stack of cooling blocks to give yourself precious extra ‘fridge’ space and get a fold-out camping table for prepping if you have room for it. Delegate tasks to all those ne’er do wells lounging around drinking champagne, preferably before they get too deep into the bottle. Relax, drink a bit of champagne yourself, this is a joyous social meal with loved ones, not sudden death Masterchef!
We’re probably too flighty in our house to ever do anything two years running on Christmas Day other than the obvious: opening presents, gorging on food, bathing in wine, but on Stephen’s Day each year without fail, my daughter and I hit the sofa and watch at least five films pretty much one after another, including one Christmas film, and eat all the Christmas biscuits and sweets in the house. My excuse is I’ve spent the all the previous day slaving over a hot stove; Daughter’s excuse is that I deserve her company. It’s the one day of the year we can get away with that sort of thing.
I’ll buy nothing for anyone who calls themselves a ‘foodie’ because I can’t stand the word—makes it sound like food’s a hobby—but for all those people in my life who are passionate about eating and cooking, along with all the usual gifts of cookbooks and kitchen kit, I’ll give them something I’ve made myself, equally infused with love and flavour, sauces, oddball relishes, pickles, ferments, anything that will really lift those turkey and ham sandwich creations. Over the years, I have given a few budding cooks gifts of a proper chef’s knife, an acknowledgement that they are in this whole cooking and eating thing for the long haul.
I am doing a deep fried turkey for Thanksgiving so we’re going to have a fine roast goose with some potato stuffing, lots of Bramley apple sauce and roasties and all the trimmings for Christmas dinner. For dessert we’ll have a lovely plum pudding, my mother’s recipe, we’ll also have mummy’s Sherry trifle just to kill us off altogether - but that’s always been the tradition.
Everybody in the family, down to the little ones, anybody who can walk pretty much has a little job on Christmas Eve. We make it into a fun thing. So somebody lays the table, somebody does the flowers, somebody gets the decorations, somebody prepares the sprouts, somebody does the spuds. Everybody has a little job and they're proud of what comes out the following day then. Having lists and getting everybody involved is it really - otherwise the cook is totally sick of it. And it's really important that everybody after dinner doesn't forget to give a hug to the cook. That's really important.
When we are making the plum pudding, we make a point of having the children gather around and everybody stirs the pudding and then we make a wish. When we put the plum puddings on to cook, which could be weeks before Christmas, the first day it usually takes five hours or something if it's a big pudding to cook, that evening we always eat one plum pudding with lots of brandy butter and Mrs. Hanrahan's Sauce. That one always tastes the best of all of them.
Something that they might not buy themselves like a super good bottle of extra virgin olive oil like a Capizzano. Another lovely gift would be a myrtus ugni plant. It’s a wonderful plant which grows wild in parts of Kerry. You can get them in your local garden centre. At this time of the year it’s covered in little red berries which are really delicious, they were actually Queen Victoria’s favourite fruit. They’re absolutely super in a salad, you can also decorate the tops of buns with them. We have them beside every single door here in the school.
