Stream free On Demand
Jamie's Easy Christmas Countdown
program • cooking • 2019
G
program • cooking • 2019
G
With years of experience and Christmases under his belt – not to mention a and several Christmas-themed TV shows – Jamie Oliver is well acquainted with . In particular, how to make the occasion as joyful and stress-free as possible. Here, Jamie shares his top tips for creating a relaxed and enjoyable occasion.
Planning ahead is key
“Christmas means to me family, friends coming together,” he explains – and, when you plan, “you earn more time with the people that you love.”
This means planning from a month in advance and working backwards. Jamie suggests mapping out schedules for your cooking tasks using visual aids like a chalkboard. Even getting down as granular to arranging tasks in 24-hour time slots.
“If you want to eat at 1pm, plan it all backwards. So you know when you’ve got to put things in the oven, you know when you’ve got to rest them, you know when you’ve got them ready the day before.”
Phone alarms are another suggestion, but Jamie prefers the analogue chalkboard – “because I can see it, and it also plays as a menu.”
The goal is to create a relaxed atmosphere for guests and avoid “a party where the host is stressing, sweating... burnt out".
Utilise your freezer
“The best hack for Christmas is really planning ahead and using your freezer,” he says.
The freezer can be your sous chef in the lead up to Christmas. Prepare items like pastry tart shells, small cakes, potato dishes, and even batches of cocktails ahead of time and store them in the freezer. This allows you to easily cater to unexpected guests.
“You can have batch-cooked cocktails in the freezer ready to go – very useful if you’ve got someone grumpy coming. Give them one of those; it will cheer them up.”
Embrace big platters and bowls
“Christmas has always been about indulgence” – and to this end, Jamie says to do away with the small serving ware and invest in some big boards, big platters, big bowls. This will allow easier sharing and a feeling of celebration – “have stuff that people can really get amongst”.
"Christmas to me means family coming together": Jamie Oliver shares a light moment with his wife Jools.
Prepare the turkey the day before
Although for an Aussie Christmas we often lean towards hams and barbecues rather than roast turkey – if you are going for a classic roast turkey, Jamie recommends stuffing it and roasting it the day before.
This will allow ample resting time (an hour and a half), which allows it to continue cooking in the middle and the juices redistribute, making for a much better, more moist and tender result.
When you plan ahead, you earn more time with the people that you love.
Make sure you cook it for the right amount of time,” he advises. Importantly, don’t skip the resting phase. “Resting a turkey for an hour and a half – people don’t take that seriously, but it’s actually getting hotter in the middle, not colder. It allows the juice to go back to where it should be – it’s going to be a much better turkey.”
Focus on the joy, and diversity, of flavours
“Christmas has always been about beautiful things from , about exploring and making something extra special.”
For Jamie – as well as being about abundance on the dining table – Christmas is also an opportunity to celebrate flavours. “We think it’s a British Christmas, but it’s quite Germanic,” he reflects. “The spices we love – for mulled wine or Christmas cake – don’t come from Europe, they come from the Caribbean and the Indies.”
In Australia, with our “patchwork quilt of ethnicities”, Jamie emphasises that Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate this diverse culinary landscape through food.
Credit: David Loftus
Embrace food as a gift
For Jamie, food gifts are personal, thoughtful – and often budget-friendly. “I love the idea of giving food as gifts… gifts that hang around the gift that keep on giving,” says Jamie, who as a young chef with “no spare money” would repurpose old jars as vessels for spice mixes, flavoured oil, vinegars and salts. “I’d get a little pestle and mortar and make some flavoured salts.”
Some of his ideas for gifting food:
- Homemade baked goods: “An amazing almond tart with Aussie stone fruit, with a few spices for that Christmassy feel... Imagine giving that to a neighbour… It’s not about how much it costs; it’s about the point that you cared.”
- Spice jars: Jamie suggests going to markets or ethnic supermarkets to get good value spices, and mixing up little jars of spices or flavored salts and giving these as gifts. Adding labels makes them feel more special.
- Flavoured oils and vinegars: Jamie suggests making or buying good oils and vinegars to give as a gift. “For the rest of the year, they’re enjoying those little things.”
- Hampers: If you're making a few different food gifts, put them in a box to create a hamper.
Giving food as a gift, Jamie says, is a way to say, "Happy Christmas, love you, thank you, thanks for everything".
