ideas for christmas dinner recipes

christmas dinner recipes

Christmas dinner ideas come easy. Turkey, Ham, or Beef with potatoes and vegetables. However, how you START your meal can be a more perplexing problem. There are infinite choices of holiday appetizers to choose from. How do you find the right recipe? You don't FIND the right recipe, you create one. And you can create any holiday appetizer you'd like once you discover the secrets behind Pate' a Choux. This is a basic puff pastry dough, often called éclair paste, but it makes an attractive shell for any filling you choose, creating an appealing holiday appetizer.

christmas dinner recipes

Appetizers, or "hors d' Oeuvres" are small bites of food to stimulate the eye and palate. "Hors d' Oeuvres" in French means "outside the meal". These appetizers were originally prepared by the wait staff in early banquets, using the leftovers and scraps from the meal to be served. While the chefs were working, the waiters were offering tastes "outside the meal". Pate a Choux dough begins by bringing milk to a full rolling boil on the stove. Just before it reaches the top of your sauce pot, add flour and stir until the dough forms a tight, smooth ball.

christmas dinner recipes

Egg proteins will give the dough its structure, but adding eggs to a very hot dough will only give you dough with scrambled eggs in it. So, the dough must be cooled to below the 165F (74c) temperature at which egg proteins coagulate. The best way to cool the dough is to add it to a mixer with a paddle attachment and simply cool by stirring. Once your thermometer reads about 100F, start adding the egg yolks in a slow stream to allow the emulsification process of fats and water to occur.

christmas dinner recipes

The cooled dough is added to a pastry bag and piped onto a baking sheet in marble-sized balls or finger-sized lengths for éclairs. You can start to think of all your other Christmas dinner ideas while the puff pastries bake in a very hot 425F oven until they're brown and fully leavened. When you tear one of your freshly baked puffs open, you'll find they're totally hollow. This gives a perfect hiding place for crab dip, chicken salad, or even jams and jellies. Your Christmas dinner ideas should always begin with the appetizers, as they set the tone for the meal to come. Serving little bites "outside the meal" helps stimulate the eye and palate for the great feast about to come.

christmas dinner recipes

christmas dinner recipes

christmas dinner recipes

Traditional Roast Beef (recipes for christmas dinner )

Traditional Roast Beef

Traditional Roast Beef

Traditional Roast Beef

Traditional Roast Beef

Instruction:

• Heat the oven to 450 degrees F.
• Remove the roast from its packaging and place it in a sturdy roasting pan.
• Rub the roast lightly with the oil. Try not to get any oil in the bottom of the roasting pan.
• Rub the roast with enough salt and pepper to lightly season it.
• Place the roasting pan in the oven.
• After 15-20 minutes, turn the heat down to 325 degrees F.
• Test for doneness using an instant-read thermometer (about $5 at most grocery stores). For rare meat, remove the roast when the internal temperature reads 130-135 degrees F. For medium rare, remove at 140-145 degrees F. And for medium, remove at 155 degrees F or above. A large rib roast takes 2-4 hours to cook
• Let the roast beef rest at room temperature, without carving or cutting into it, for 20-30 minutes

Tips:

• The best cut to use is the rib roast, or prime rib, which can be purchased whole and uncut, trimmed and reassembled, or boneless. The whole cut will have the bones and fat cap on, which protect the meat as it cooks (good) but you'll still get charged by the pound for the fat and bones (bad).
• Trimmed and reassembled prime ribs have had their bones and fat cap removed, and then tied back on by the butcher. You pay for this service, too, but these roasts are easier to serve because you just cut the strings and remove the boneless roast inside after it's cooked.
• Boneless rib roasts are more expensive per pound because you pay for the butcher to trim it, but you yield more meat after cooking. These also cook faster but will have a higher percentage of meat cooked medium or above.
• Other good roasting cuts include a whole strip or shell roast, which New York steaks are cut from, and whole tenderloins, which the filet mignon comes from. For a tenderloin, brown it in a frying pan first, and then roast it.
• Whole strip roasts cook in 90 minutes or less; tenderloins cook in 30 minutes or less.
• Always let roasted meat rest for a few minutes before cutting it. Residual heat will continue cooking the meat for up to 20 minutes after it comes out of the oven. Also, meat will "reabsorb" the juices that are released within it during cooking. Cut it too soon and these juices leak out.
• Cooking times are not precise because individual ovens and roasts are different. Use a meat thermometer to know for sure.

Roast a Turkey (recipes for christmas dinner )

Roast a Turkey

Roast a Turkey

Roast a Turkey

Roast a Turkey

Instruction:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
• Remove turkey from its wrapping and remove neck and giblets from inside the cavity. Set aside to make gravy later (see Related eHows).
• Rinse turkey inside and out with cold water. Pat dry with paper towels.
• Put oven rack on lowest level of oven.
• Place turkey, breast side up, on a roasting rack in a roasting pan.
• Rub the outside of the turkey with olive oil.
• Salt and pepper the turkey's body and cavity. Use the salt and pepper to taste. Remember, if you add too much you can ruin the taste, but you can always add extra later.
• Roast turkey about 3 hours, or until a meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh registers 175 to 180 degrees F.

Tips:
In general, a turkey should be roasted 10 to 12 minutes per pound if it is not stuffed and 12 to 15 minutes per pound if it is stuffed.

In general, you shouldn't cover a roasting turkey (or any roasting meat); you want the skin to get a nice, deep brown all over, and you don't want it to steam in its own juices. However, if the turkey begins to brown too quickly, well before it's likely to be done, you can cover the brown parts loosely with aluminum foil. (This is likely to happen with larger birds.) Try to cover as little of the turkey as possible so you don't create steam.