Christmas Recipes
Cookies, roasts, sides and drinks — every recipe with real prep and cook times, servings, and a full ingredient list before you start.
- Recipes
- 30
- Categories
- 9
- Easy
- 18
What should I cook for Christmas dinner?
A traditional Christmas dinner is a roast — turkey or glazed ham — with roast potatoes, a green vegetable, stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy. The thing that makes it manageable is that most of it can be made ahead: cranberry sauce keeps two weeks, stuffing freezes for a month, and potatoes can be parboiled the day before. Only the roast itself genuinely has to happen on Christmas Day.
- Turkey per person
- 500g on the bone, 350g boned
- Cranberry sauce
- Keeps 2 weeks refrigerated
- Christmas cake
- Better made 4-6 weeks ahead
- Vegetarian recipes here
- 16 of 30
Browse by course
🍪 Cookies & Baking
Gingerbread, sugar cookies, and every holiday baking recipe you need.
2 recipes
🦃 Main Courses
Roast turkey, ham, prime rib, and show-stopping Christmas dinner mains.
2 recipes
🥗 Side Dishes
Classic and creative sides to complete your holiday feast.
2 recipes
🎂 Desserts
Pies, cakes, puddings, and sweet treats beyond cookies.
3 recipes
🧀 Appetizers
Party platters, dips, and finger foods for holiday entertaining.
5 recipes
🍷 Drinks & Cocktails
Eggnog, mulled wine, hot chocolate, and festive cocktails.
4 recipes
🍬 Candy & Confections
Fudge, toffee, peppermint bark, and homemade candy gifts.
5 recipes
🥞 Christmas Breakfast
Christmas morning breakfasts and holiday brunch ideas.
2 recipes
🌎 International
Traditional Christmas recipes from around the world.
5 recipes
Christmas dinner menu & timings
Two complete menus with a working timeline — what to cook when, and what can be done days ahead.
Start here
Every cookie recipe, compared
Times and yields side by side, so you can pick by the afternoon you have rather than the picture.
Baking
Cooking Christmas dinner without the panic
Almost everything that goes wrong on Christmas Day is an oven-space problem, not a cooking problem. A turkey occupies the oven for hours at one temperature while potatoes want a much hotter one, and the pigs in blankets, the stuffing and the parsnips all want to go in at roughly the same moment. Working out the oven schedule the day before is worth more than any individual recipe on this site.
The other thing worth knowing early: the bird needs to rest. A large turkey holds its heat for 45 minutes to an hour under foil, and that rest is not optional — it is what stops the juices running out the moment you carve. It is also, conveniently, exactly the window in which the oven is free to blast the potatoes.
What to make ahead
Cranberry sauce, bread sauce, stuffing, the cake, the mince pies and the pudding can all be done days or weeks in advance. Parboiled roast potatoes keep overnight in the fridge, roughed up and ready to go. Gravy can be made from the giblets days ahead and finished with the roasting juices on the day. Recipes here list the make-ahead window where one exists, because it is usually the most useful line in the method.