Christmas Dinner for One 2021

foodcheats | 2021 | Main Meals | No Comments

This year’s Christmas Dinner for One was, again, different to previous years – probably “simpler”. I do like to cook what resembles a Christmas Dinner just to mark the occasion, but, over the years, I have different thoughts about how I can do “the minimum” while still having a dinner that looks like it’s Christmas, but with an eye on minimising the leftovers (cooked and raw) trailing in my wake!

I’ve moved house this year and the oven doesn’t work. It works fine cooking 1-2 items on one shelf if I use the grill + fan option, so dinner needed to be cooked under the grill/fan setting and on one shelf – I wanted to minimise any shelf shuffling of items.

Apologies for the slightly blurry photos, I was in a rush to just eat it, as I’d been waiting four hours since I’d started + my hands do shake when I’m keen/anxious to crack on 🙂

Christmas Menu 2021

This year I finally settled on the following Christmas Day menu:

An 800 gram turkey breast joint, frozen and acquired way back in October to make sure I had it.
Yorkshire puddings, I decided to buy these in again as it’s easier
Packet stuffing mix – I bought a Cranberry & Orange stuffing mix
Cauliflower cheese – I made this last week in the microwave and froze it
Brussels sprouts and carrots
Roast potatoes and roast parsnips
Mashed potatoes
Bisto turkey gravy – simply the best tasting gravy granules I’ve ever found, so I am sticking with these!

Prepare Ahead Xmas Dinner

I like to prepare as much as possible ahead of the day. I defrosted the turkey breast joint: Remove the frozen turkey breast joint from the freezer and put it in the fridge to defrost on the evening of 23 December, giving it two nights and a whole day to defrost. Leaving it sealed in its packaging.

I peeled and mashed potatoes the day before, using the microwave. The mashed potatoes were stored in the fridge in a plastic, lidded, takeaway box, ready to be microwaved on Christmas Day.

I peeled, parboiled and “fluffed up” my roast potatoes, using the microwave to parboil them. I then sprayed the potatoes with oil on a sheet of baking foil, covered them and put them in the fridge.

Method:

On Christmas Day peel an onion and put it in the bottom of the slow cooker, along with 2-3 carrots. Remove the turkey breast joint from all its wrappings and the foil baking tray and place it on top of the onions and carrots. Turn the slow cooker on to HIGH for one hour, then down to LOW (for 2½ hours).
Peel and cut the parsnips; peel the carrots and brussels sprouts and put them into water in a bowl on the side.
Place the tray for the roast potatoes in the oven, lined with foil if you wish and with a little oil. Remove the pre-prepared roast potatoes from the fridge, give them another little spray of oil. Once melted, swirl the oil in the baking tin around and add the potatoes, turn the potatoes over to coat them in hot fat. Roast for 20 minutes, then turn the potatoes and add the parsnips (if I’m using large parsnips I’d microwave them with 1-2 spoons of water for 2-3 minutes to get them started). Keep checking/turning them every 10 minutes or so until they look how you like them.
Defrost the frozen cauliflower cheese and put it into an oven-safe dish.
Mix up the packet stuffing mix and transfer to an oven-safe dish (or just a foil wrap)
Place the cauliflower cheese and stuffing into the oven. The cauliflower cheese is already cooked/warm from defrosting so you’re just re-heating it a little and browning the top.
Use the microwave to cook the brussels sprouts and carrots.

Christmas Dinner Timings

For the record, here are the rough timings on the day! It can be difficult to say how long things will take, so you do need to keep your eye on things to ensure that the potatoes are “brown enough” and the parsnips are “just the colour you like” – we all like food cooked to a different colour scale 🙂

9.00 Turn on slow cooker HIGH, containing the turkey breast joint, then down to LOW at 10.00
11.20 Oven on for roast potatoes. 11.30 Roast potatoes into the oven
11.50 Turn potatoes, add parsnips
12.00 Defrost the frozen cauliflower cheese in the microwave
12.10 Place the stuffing and the cauliflower cheese into the oven to brown.
12.25 Microwave the brussels sprouts and carrots in a takeaway box with a little water. Microwave the mashed potato so it’s hot.
12.30 Turn off the oven, then remove roast potatoes, roast parsnips, cauliflower cheese and stuffing from the oven. Pop two frozen Yorkshire puddings into the oven.

Microwave Cauliflower Cheese Browned in the Oven

12.30 Turn off the slow cooker. Remove everything from the oven.
12.40 Mix up the Bisto turkey gravy granules
12.45 Serve.

Start time 9am, served by 1pm. The oven was on for just over an hour! As the microwave was used to cook the brusssels sprouts and carrots there was no steam produced. There was barely any washing up either!

Verdict!

Well, it didn’t look great in the photos, but in the flesh it looked a lot better and it tasted lovely – although there was far too much food on the plate and I really should’ve just had one Yorkshire pudding 🙂

Cauliflower Cheese: Every year I’ve wondered if I should make a cauliflower cheese for myself – and by God I’m glad I did, it was utterly lovely. In fact, I wish I’d made more of it! If I were to be the New Year’s Resolution type it’d definitely be to make more cauliflower cheese in 2022 🙂 I hope I remember.

Aldi Cranberry & Orange stuffing, £1.09 – this was nice enough, but I think I’d have preferred to have made my own Parsley & Thyme stuffing in all honesty. Next year, I’ll try to remember to buy one festive flavour pack and make my own.

Roast Potatoes: I was surprised how well the potatoes came out, as I’d only used the grill and fan setting to cook them.

Small Parsnips: I was disappointed with the size of the parsnips this year. I bought these at the last minute in Aldi and all the packs were thin parsnips; I like fat, chunky parsnips, where you can really taste the flavour. These were pretty tasteless.

The Turkey Bisto gravy granules were gorgeous again! They are definitely a winner that I’ll be sticking with, to use as my main gravy flavour this year, no matter what I’m cooking. Would recommend.

I am glad I decided to not serve peas or broccoli.

And that was it! I barely got through it all, had no dessert and didn’t feel hungry until the next morning! I’m a Christmas Lightweight 🙂

It’s Christmas leftovers for every meal for the next 3-4 days I think!

Microwave Christmas Dinner Next Year?

After this year’s effort I’m actually considering cooking the whole Christmas Dinner 1-2 days ahead and just microwaving it hot on the day. That way I can probably enjoy it more and even consider going out for a beach walk on Christmas morning instead of feeling chained to the kitchen and food. I’ll see how I feel about that closer to the time.

It’d just be more enjoyable to spend the day wafting around in my Christmas jumper, watching TV, going for a beach walk, then eating when I feel hungry…. rather than waiting hours and hours to get to the end, by which time I’ve gone off the idea of food a bit 🙂

Happy Christmas everybody! What you eat and how you cook it is your choice….