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To bring the thread full circle, the post-mortem is as follows;
In the end, in advance I;
- Made the bread sauce
- Prepped the sprouts
- Made the yorkie batter - had separated a bit overnight which was disconcerting, but after a whisk the puds themselves came out great
- Par-boiled the spuds. On taking them out of the fridge on the day, about half of them had taken on a fetching grey colour. I think this is where I lost my nerve last time and re-did them. This time I said "**** it" and carried on regardless. They came out great.
Grey spuds;
Acceptable outcome;
Gout on a plate;
Satisfied customers;
That looks excellent 🙂
We were going to do a non traditional Christmas roast beef, instead we did non traditional fillet steak, chips, peas and mushrooms with blue cheese and Parmesan. It was awesome 😀
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Doing the roast today instead.
Looks good, but you've taken your eyeoff the ball with the pigs. And only one? Come on! 😂
Sod prepping the day before. Chucked the lamb in the oven with anchovies, garlic, rosemary & red wine, prepped the veg while that was cooking and cooked it while the lamb was resting. Turned out perfectly although I forgot to put the broccoli on the plate!
Yeah, the pigs got a bit neglected when I cranked the oven up for the yorkies. Carbonisation is where the flavour is though, yeah?
Re. one only - If I’d gobbled them all yesterday I wouldn’t have been able to scarf them for breakfast this morning in a sarnie 🙂
I did the taters on the day, parboiled, cooled, slightly forked to roughen texture. Coated lightly in olive oil and added to (took advice here) to a preheated /hot roasting dish containing foil and olive oil. The spuds sizzled as they hit the foil/oil. Added other veg (carrots, parsnips) and chestnuts along the way. Gave an extra 30 mins cook to be sure and roasties turned out best I’ve ever done. Didn’t take a pic but timmy’s up there look identical. Well chuffed and well-received. Thanks STWrs
Turned out perfectly
Although you’ve positioned than at the back, you realise we can see those potatoes yeah? 😉
Being a veggie is not wrong.
Absolutely. My little joke was about being lazy and using frozen roast spuds, rather than doing ‘em right. Didn’t mean to be disparaging about vegetarians, sorry. For the record, I was up for a bit of solidarity and all having a meet free day, but the boss insisted on her Turkey. As it happens it was very easy to cook for both… and I should have just done proper spuds without using any bird fat… as my daughter pointed out mid-morning…obvious really in hindsight.
OP… thanks for completing the circle and reporting back.
Christmas Dinner is the day my kitchen comes into its own! I refitted/extended a few years back and it really is the centre of the house. I love cooking, and everybody congregates. The one huge extravagance (actually cost nothing!) was keeping the old dishwasher and plumbing it in the corner, so we have 2 dishwashers, making cleaning as we go soooo much easier.
Yesterday whilst I cooked, my youngest made his Mandalorian Lego head, oldest daughter played with her elec guitar loop pedal and the missus crochet'd a reindeer with her new crochet hooks. A real Christmas kitchen of chaos!!
WRT pre-prepping, my daughter made a roulade in the morning whilst I walked the dogs, and I made the Yorkshire batter the night before.
Roast potatoes is a game of chicken - they should be parboiled to the point that they barely hold their shape, then into hot fat to crisp off the outsides, whilst amazingly soft in the middle. Roast parsnips similar.
Yorkshires - use a deep muffin tin with 2-3mm oil in the bottom, preheated. fill the muffin cases just over half. 20 mins on 220C fan
Sprouts - par boil whole, then cut in half & pan fry in butter until crispy. Half with pancetta, half without as we have a veggie daughter.
Roast turkey is boring, so we had a fillet joint of beef which I wrapped in Parma ham and roasted to rare. roasting tin juices start the gravy - add red wine, redcurrant jelly, stock, thyme and a dash of cream. A whole fillet joint from my butcher is cheaper than a turkey - Ive sliced off 4 fillet steaks for later too, and there was plenty. The other good thing about cooking a fillet joint, if you have a heathen who won't eat meat that isn't well done, chop off one end and put it back in for an extra 15 minutes.
Oh, and stuffing, I mix in some rocket and grated cheese in addition to the sage and onion, using sourdough bread for the base. I bind it with a dash of milk.
– Par-boiled the spuds. On taking them out of the fridge on the day, about half of them had taken on a fetching grey colour.
I've now discovered that you can par-boil the spuds (ad shake/air dry/cool) weeks before - just freeze them on the trya and then transfer them to a bag.
Cook from frozen (same amount of time as normal) and they're epic-ally good - crunchy bits are even crunchier than when they're not frozen.
Same can be done with the parsnips.
I made gravy two weeks ago (proper job using roasted veg/chicken wings) then froze it. Apparently it was the best ever.
Not having pans of veg, etc all over the place makes life so much nicer.