No-Fail Shortcuts for Christmas Cooking

Everyone looks forward to Christmas dinner and desserts all year long. After all aren't the holidays all about eating? With a little planning and some strategy though, you can cut down on your time in the kitchen and join the family in front of the Christmas tree! Here are some shortcut tips for Christmas cooking:

Prepare Ingredients Ahead of Time:

Everyone eats some dish with pasta in it at Christmas. Macaroni and cheese and other pasta dishes from scratch are time consuming. Try boiling your pasta a day or two before hand. Put is in a Tupper ware or Zip Loc bag with a tiny bit of oil to keep it from sticking together. Now you don't have to take the precious time on Christmas day to boil the large pot of water, watch it while you wait for it to boil and then wait 9 more minutes cooking the pasta.

Measure Your Ingredients Ahead of time

You will be shocked at how much time it saves if you measure out your ingredients before hand. For example, if you just have to make your famous eggnog pound cake every year for Christmas dessert, then this step should apply to you. Measure out all of your dry ingredients for the pound cake. Go ahead and sift them. Place the ingredients in a Zip Lock bag and all you have to do it dump it into the blender with the wet ingredients on Christmas Day.

This is also a great step for the Mac and Cheese. Go ahead and measure out the cheese and milk.

Assemble anything you Can

Some Christmas dishes are perfectly fine made before hand and then cooked the day of. A prime example would be traditional Christmas stuffing. Make ahead, keep it in the casserole dish, wrap with plastic and stick it in the fridge. You can take it out on Christmas Day; let it come to room temperature and then pop it in the oven to warm it. This would also freeze well if you wanted to make it weeks ahead of time.

Make mashed potatoes the night before. To revamp them on Christmas Day at a little warm milk or cream and stir until they are fluffy again. Reheat them over a double boiler though; you don't want to scald them.

Many Christmas dishes would work well this way. Restaurants and big dining venues all work this way. Hotel, casinos, and even Sports Arenas use all of these tricks. There is no reason they can't work on a smaller scale in your kitchen.

Make the Christmas Desserts Before Hand

Desserts are the end to the perfect Christmas meal. You can easily make any dessert the day before and it will still be fresh on Christmas Day. Honestly you could make dessert up to 3 days before hand and they should still be fine. Remember though, if they need to stay in the fridge, keep them there.

Using these tips you can easily cut your time in the kitchen on Christmas Day in half.