What is your traditional Christmas meal?
We usually center ours around a roast: beef, goose, lamb or turkey. Sometimes Christmas duplicates Thanksgiving, but often it goes astray. It’s not so traditional. We have more friends, since many of our friends are Jewish and are not available on Thanksgiving, but have no family obligations on Christmas. Other friends don’t have much family around.
For sides, well, whatever. It changes. Nothing traditional except creamed onions.
For dessert, maybe mince pie, or maybe a special apple tart or something else. I usually go all out and make a really complicated dessert that I never should make because it takes too much work and never comes out as well as I think it should.
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9 Answers
Pretty much Thanksgiving without the Oyster dressing (which I’m convinced no one actually likes anyway), with different pie, and the addition of mulled cider.
I go along with my husband’s traditions since I did not grow up with Christmas in my family. Usually a shrimp based seafood broth for starters. Then picadillo (a ground pork recipe with olives, onions, tomatoes) some yummy french rolls and sometimes a cod dish. His mom makes bacalao (dried and salted cod) by soaking it and then making it in a tomato based type of thing, but I just use fresh cod, place on a baking sheet that has sides, lined with foil, salt the fish, add sliced salted tomatoes on top and all around, and then squeeze a little lemon on the whole thing. I make that fish at other times of the year also. On the side is usually rice, and I might make a salad also, or a cooked vegetable of some sort.
Dessert would be whatever we decided, no tradition.
You didn’t ask, but I’ll go ahead and add for Chanukah on whichever night falls on the weekend I make potatoe latkes, and some sort of meat dish like a brisket, or roast beef, even corned beef. Some veggies, usually sauteed or cooked with the meat, depending on the dish. Dessert sometimes are donuts for tradition, but not always. I didn’t grow up with donuts, but it is a tradition for chanukah.
Christmas eve has more traditional food in my family. When I was growing up, my dad would make chili (because that was all he could cook) so my mom would be free to do other things (like bake Julekake). I continued the chili and added cheese burritos. Christmas Day could be anything from gumbo to ham, to duck a l’orange. Whatever we fancied. Christmas was not a big family gathering for us. Chocolate icebox cake was frequently dessert. We loved that.
Roast turkey most traditionally, with roast potatoes, stuffing, mash, pigs-in-blankets, roast parsnips, yorkshire puds, sprouts, carrots, maybe broccoli or some other green veg, cranberry jelly, maybe bread sauce… And oodles of gravy. My mouth is watering just at the thought! The meal is accompanied by the Christmas Crackers, complete with joke, novelty toy and paper hat.
Pudding is traditional Christmas Pudding, ideally doused in brandy and set fire to, and even better with a sixpence hidden inside (though these days a fifty pence coin is more likely).
Open with my mother’s fruit cup recipe: grape fruit halve shells, filled with fruit mix of grapefruit, bananas, grapes, maraschino cherries with mint garnish mixed in. The one time no one made it there was a rebellion…
Roast Beef (we call it roast beast), stove taddies (Scottish roasted potatoes) Yorkshire Pudding, gravy, peas with mushrooms, creamed spinach.
Plum pudding and or mince pie for dessert.
@zenvelo I like using the grapefruit rind as a bowl. Cute.
Ramen.
The special kind with like the quail eggs and stuff.
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