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Prepping and Freezing in Advance For Christmas: Top Tips From Kate Hall

Kate Hall’s much loved @thefullfreezer is a mine of genius tips for cutting food waste and making food preparation a breeze. We couldn’t think of anyone better to share some advice for a stress-free Christmas dinner.

There’s nothing quite like a home-cooked Christmas dinner, but it can be pretty stressful tackling this on the 25th itself. If you’d rather spend your day with family instead of in the kitchen, why not order your Christmas veggies sooner rather than later and get them prepared in advance?

 

Potatoes can be prepped as normal, but instead of putting them in the oven, allow them to cool under a clean tea towel, and then pop them on a lined tray in the freezer (this stops them from clumping together). Once they’re frozen solid they can be stored in a freezer bag, and on Christmas day you can cook them straight from frozen as if they were fresh!

 

For your carrots, parsnips, broccoli and sprouts, they just need a quick dip in boiling water, then a plunge into ice-cold water (to stop them cooking), then a few minutes to air dry and cool. For carrot and parsnip batons give them 3 minutes in the boiling water. For carrot rounds, broccoli florets and sprouts, allow 2 minutes (or 3-4 if they’re big sprouts!). Once they’re cool, spread them out on your lined tray just like the potatoes, pop them in the freezer, and again, you can store them in freezer bags once they’re frozen through.

 

These can also be cooked straight from frozen on Christmas day, just be sure to reduce the cooking time by the 2-3 minutes mentioned above. You can boil or steam them, or for an even more hands-off approach, roast them with a touch of oil and a drizzle of honey. You could even chuck in a few frozen sprigs of rosemary and some frozen garlic cloves.

 

Make sure you check out @freshmilkandmore on Instagram for easy video instructions and more top tips from Kate!