Cook Your First Christmas Dinner

So you are cooking your first Christmas dinner? Congratulations! You may be a bit nervous but also excited. That’s perfectly natural. Christmas is likely among one of the most indulgent meals most Americans eat all year. As a family meal, it is also a very important meal. Your Christmas meal is probably filled with traditional recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation. Try our tips to cook a wonderful first Christmas dinner.

Begin by doing all of your grocery shopping early. You want to be sure you don’t run out of spices or any of the staples like milk or eggs as you are trying to cook. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to make your favorite pie or sweet dessert and then to discover you are out of nutmeg or other critical spices! Before the Christmas crunch hits, go through your cupboards and see what you have. Now is the time to go to the grocery store for the basics and everything you’ll need to cook Christmas dinner.

Give your kitchen an extra cleaning before the holidays get started. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to cook in a kitchen that is not quite as clean as it should be. When your oven isn’t clean, it won’t cook as quickly or get as hot as it should. Best of all, your family will enjoy a super clean kitchen for the holidays and this will make clean up for the holidays a snap.

Remember all of those “extra” things you need for Christmas that don’t involve cooking but still make your dinner turn out perfectly. You may want toothpicks for cheese and olives as people are enjoying a cocktail while the main meal is cooking. Or matching paper napkins for the tablecloth. Get all of these things now, before the store is running low on the practical items you’ll need most of all.

Think about what is important to your family – and what you could get pre-prepared. In some families having a made-from-scratch chocolate mousse is very important. It is their Great Grandma’s recipe and they want to have it every year. In other families it is the stuffing recipe. Focus on what is important and consider having other things that are pre-prepared. You could get stuffing from a mix or the chocolate mousse from the dessert counter at the grocery store – this would save you preparation time as a hostess. As long as it doesn’t take away from Christmas this is an ideal choice.