How to make a Christmas dinner!

[Nick]

Oh yes, I just COULD NOT resist it... a guide for the uninitiated, inebriated and mentally challenged... I bring you, in a lsightly drunken state, a 'how to' guide for Chrimbo Dinner!

There's a lot to cover, so I'll make it as readable and enjoyable as possible, but it's going to have to come in installments as there's sooo much you didn't even know you NEEDED to know.

So, without further ado, or any more introduction, ladies and gentlemen, yes, yes, YES!! I give you

THE HOTPOT FESTIVE DINNER GUIDE

Part 1

Right, in response to numerous requests from customers here in the store, I thought you lot might like a rough guide on how to cook a Chrimbo dinner... plus a few suggestions on what to put with it.

The first thing is to plan out what you're going to do. Are you going for a simple turkey, roasties and two veg affair, or are you going for a seven course burst your stomach after one 'waffer theen meent' blow out?

Whichever you're looking at, it'll all be so much easier if you have a plan written out. I've been cooking professionally for 16 years now and I STILL write job lists for myself, it's the safest and easiest way to manage your time and not miss anything.

So, enough meandering, let's get on with it... oh, one more thing, if you're NOT doing the cooking, I don't recommend shoving a guide under the nose of the person who is doing it. That's the quickest way for you and a bottle of sherry to end up in A+E with the X-rays appearing on Bravo in their "Weird things inserted in an orifice" show... trust me on this one.....

What you could do to win an enormous amount of favour is to perhaps offer to do a couple of the jobs.... Of course, you've got the list, so pick out a few, offer up to do them and then you'll become the angel of the house for doing pretty much nothing.

You could peel some spuds or prep the brussels sprouts... or if you fancy you could stuff the turkey. (If you do stuff the turkey make sure its dead first, many a court case has been heard after a misunderstanding like that.)

Anyway, do a couple of jobs before the big day and then you can slack off all day claiming to have helped with dinner which makes you immune from having to do anything else at ALL except watch TV and burp a lot whilst getting slowly hammered.

I'll post some more of this guide up later on today, in the meantime, feel free to dive in with anything you might want to add!

[Nick]

Part 2

Ok, now we’ve got that pre-amble out of the way, let’s get dinner sorted.

BEFORE CHRISTMAS DAY

This is when you want to get pretty much everything squared away. Lots of people think that it all has to be done on the day, but that’s absolute rubbish. I guess it harks back to the days when refrigerators weren’t exactly common so lots of preparation was done last minute… Nowadays we’ve got those American style fridges that you could park a car in and still have room to sub-let a compartment to a family of homesick Eskimos, so you might as well make the most use of it.

If you’re like me and not blessed with more chiller space than your local Iceland, you can still get lots of stuff done in advance which won’t need refridgerating. Get it down now and then move on to the Christmas Eve knees up down the pub!

First off, the main part of the meal is the turkey. If you’ve got a frozen bird (I mean turkey here… I know Knox has several frozen birds in his ‘special’ freezer), have a very close look at the instructions on the packet. It’ll tell you how to defrost the bird safely. I don’t care what anyone says, but running 22 kilos of solidly frozen turkey under the hot tap in the bath on Christmas morning is NOT good food hygiene. Nor is leaving it on the side in the kitchen for two days. You MUST defrost the turkey someplace COLD.

For most people, squeezing a dirty great turkey into their fridge to defrost can present something of a challenge. You need to look at it slightly differently though. The turkey HAS to go in the fridge, everything else can come out, then squeeze them in around the turkey. It might be a good opportunity to clear the fridge out at the same time… so that cheese with the interesting growth can go… as can the bacon that keeps running off and hiding when the light goes on.

Make sure the turkey is sitting in a tray or tin that will catch and hold any juices that come out as the bird defrosts. There is NOTHING in this world more revolting than discovering that little salad drawer at the bottom of the fridge has filled up with raw turkey juices…. Especially if you only notice the juice AFTER eating the salad…


More to come later

[megah0]

/me settles down to read

great idea chap

[Nick]

Part 4

Ok, so the turkey has been put in to defrost in time to work on it. All you need to do now is figure out what you’re going to do with. Now, if you just plan to roast the thing without any faffing about, time the defrosting process so that it’s ready by early evening on Christmas Eve. All you’ve got to do is lob it in a roasting tin and slam it in the oven on Christmas Day, so just to be sure it’s defrosted, aim for the night before… a few extra hours in the fridge certainly won’t do it any harm. If you want to jazz it up a bit, then you’ll need the bird ready earlier, so aim for Christmas Eve morning for the defrosting to be done and then you’ve got all day to sod it up, before disappearing to the pub in the evening.

Concerns have been raised about the risk of stuffing your bird before roasting it, which I’ll briefly cover here. Essentially, what you’re doing when stuffing a turkey is filling the body cavity with breadcrumbs mixed with a bit of onion and stuff. The problem comes as the bird starts cook.

All those juices we talked about earlier, the ones that’ll collect in the salad drawer if you’re not careful, will now come out of the bird as it cooks. This isn’t a problem if the juices themselves get nice and hot as that’ll kill any bacteria in them… BUT if the the bird has a dirty great wad of stuffing in it, all that happens is the juices soak into the stuffing.

You might think this is cool as the whole thing is in the oven… and it is exactly that… cool. Not hot. COOL.

Don’t forget, around the outside of that ball of stuffing are the bones of the bird, then a good couple of inches of breast meat, then a layer of foil… not much chance of the stuffing getting heated anywhere near to 63°C, the temperature at which bacteria even START to be killed off. What you’re actually doing is giving them plenty of time and warmth to breed… so sage and onion stuffing becomes salmonella and nausea… and you can kiss goodbye any chance of watching ‘The Great Escape’ unless you’ve got a view of the telly from the bathroom.

Ok, so we’re not going to stuff it, but we can still jazz it up nicely and get plenty of innuendo in, which should keep everyone happy, but we'll cover what we are going to do in part 4...

[Alex]

in a lsightly drunken state

That bit made me laugh!

Great idea for a thread though, I'm always up fpr a roast dinner

[Nick]

Wahey! Someone actually got it!

I dunno, I'm too damn subtle for me own good sometimes....

[Nick]

Part Five

Ok, now it’s time for part 5, and this is where innuendo kicks in full blast, so it’s well worth a read and trying to keep a clean mind and straight face…

First off, remove the packaging from the bird and have a feel around inside the body cavity for the bag of giblets. Some birds come with them, some without, it'll say on the packaging whether or not yours does. Remove the giblets and empty the bag into the roasting tray you're going to use to cook the turkey. Now add to that some roughly chopped onion, carrot, celery and leek. Just enough to cover the bottom of the tray. It's not essential to use four veg, but it makes a cracking gravy if you do. Add to that about ½ a pint of light chicken stock and a splash of red wine. You don't want masses of liquid knocking about in the bottom of the tray, just enough to cover the veg.

Now turn to your bird and get that ready to cook. First off, you'll want to remove the "parson's nose". This is a gland that produces a waxy substance the turkey uses to preen its feathers... seeing as it hasn't got any feathers and is lying on your chopping board, I think its fairly safe that it won’t be needing it anymore… the wax in the gland can taint your gravy and make the turkey taste funny, so grab yourself a sharp knife or a decent pair of heavy duty scissors and snip it off.

Now, over at the other end, you’ll find where the neck of the bird used to be. There’s usually a dirty great flap of skin here where the neck was. It’s up to you but I usually just tuck my bird’s flaps back underneath, but it’s worth a quick check inside to see if any giblets are in there. If so, whip them out and bung them in the roasting tin with the rest.

Now move back to the other end of the bird as we’re going to work on the breasts and get them tasting lovely.

First off, take a sharp knife and gently separate the skin from the breasts around the edge of the hole into the body cavity. Remember, you’re doing this from the end between the legs, NOT from the neck end, ok?

There’s a membrane that holds the skin onto the breasts and all you want to do is free the skin off but NOT remove it… the idea is you make enough of a hole so you can get your hand it and work it all over the breasts, freeing off the skin.

Once you’ve done that, grab yourself some butter or marge and rub that all over the breasts, under the skin. If you want, you can mix a dried herb like sage with the butter before rubbing it in, or use sprigs of the fresh stuff. The butter will help keep the breast nice and moist while the bird cooks.

Once you’ve finished flavouring up the breasts, tuck the skin back around the egde of the hole and place the bird in the roasting tin.

Now take a bit more butter or marge and rub this all over the outside of your bird. Get a little over the breast skin and don’t forget to grease up the legs and thighs too.

Now season with salt and pepper and if you like, sprinkle with dried sage. All of this preparation is going to make your bird taste fantastic on the big day!

To get the bird ready to go in the oven, first cover it with a small sheet of baking paper. You don’t need masses, just enough to cover the bits of the bird that may come into contact with the tin foil that’s going to cover it all. This is to stop the salt on your bird’s skin from reacting with the tin foil as it roasts…. otherwise you’ll end up with little silver spots all over it.

Once the baking paper is one, cover everything with a big sheet of foil that’s large enough to reach all edges of your tin and really scrunch it down nice and tightly. Getting a good seal here is very important as all the flavours going on in that tray need to be kept in there as the bird cooks and all that moisture will help to keep the breasts juicy and tender, not dry and flaky.

[0iD]

Gah! double entente overload...........or do I just have a feelthy feelthy mind?

[Lee H]

@ all the puns here.

Quality thread and hopefully most the people will take notice and not put their stuffing in the bird for cooking inside and have a nice christmas instead of counting the cracks on the toilet tiles at home

[poolking]

Just reading this thread is making my mouth water.

[Zak33]

just reading it making my sides ache

[XTR]

What happened to part3 ?

[poolking]

What happened to part3 ?

I would say that Part 4 is Part 3 etc.

[Nick]

Well, it was written in a bit of a stupor... next part will be up as soon as I've had me dinner...

[SmileyUK]

very good reading (i cant/never cook) and it still amused me reading through.

Good luck with the compy!

[shiato storm]

it’s well worth a read and [try] to keep a clean mind and straight face

certainly failed on both counts there mate!