From time-honoured family traditions to the fresh recipes we’ve recently discovered, these are the dishes that will make it onto our festive tables.
Good Food team
The Good Food team spends all year obsessing over food, so you know that our Christmas menus will be epic.
We’ve mined the Good Food recipe catalogue and our own family archives to plan feasts that are big on flavour and personality. Expect everything from Katrina Meynink’s eye-catching dirty martini dip and mortadella olives and Adam Liaw’s golden, crackling-covered porchetta, to a nostalgic lasagne that always delights.
So swipe the recipes we love, crank the carols and turn up the heat. It’s time to get cooking.
Callan Boys, national restaurant editor
For breakfast, leg ham on toast with a sparkling red because there are few better food and wine matches in the universe. Oysters Kilpatrick and pink champagne (Larmandier-Bernier, hopefully) to kick off lunch, which will once again be headlined by a turkey despite my annual suggestion that two heritage-breed chickens would be tastier and juicier than one big ol’ five-kilo bird. A mountain of tallow-roasted potatoes is non-negotiable, but we’ll always try at least one new side, and this peach and tomato salad from Julia Busuttil Nishimura has my attention.
Emma Breheny, Melbourne restaurant editor
This year, I’m off the hook for hosting, which means I’ve received the blessed tap to “bring a salad”. I hear there’ll be a leg of lamb on the table, and perhaps some porchetta, too. I’m thinking this chopped salad of cucumber, apple, red onion and feta by Adam Liaw will add a welcome dose of crunch. The nuttiness of freekeh and juiciness of roasted tomatoes sounds like a winning combo (no surprise when it’s a Kepos Street Kitchen recipe). And a whole roasted cauliflower is a dead-easy showstopper to add to the table.
Isabel Cant, social media editor
Why have ham when you can have a crunchy, bubbling, salty slab of pork belly? Something about it feels much grander and more occasion-worthy. Mainly, it’s due to the considerable prep time, and the real estate it hogs in your fridge during said prep time. But when you bite into the crisp pork crackling, it’s oh so worth it. This year, we’re trying Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s slow-roasted pork belly, with peach salad on the side. The other great thing about serving pork belly at Christmas is that you can make banh mi with the leftovers.
Dion Georgopoulos, videographer and multimedia editor
Honestly, I would say the best thing about Christmas isn’t the gifts. It’s always been Dad’s home-cooked food. Being from a Greek background, the menu revolves around seafood and Greek cuisine. My dad brings together a big family feast, which starts with a meze of crispy spanakopita, tangy tzatziki, taramasalata, olives and bread, and a side of fresh spicy prawns. The main dish is his oven-baked salmon. Dad and Helen Goh obviously have similar tastes, but instead of a crumb crust, my dad layers the salmon with pine nuts, dates, salt flakes, dill and lots of lemon. What more could you ask for on Christmas Day?
Roslyn Grundy, recipe editor
Hetty McKinnon’s whole roasted cauliflower with a mountain of dill immediately claimed a spot on the Christmas menu tab I keep open in my head. There’s the charred exterior, the soft interior. But what really sold it was the triumvirate of dill oil, fiery hot sauce and garlicky tahini dressing. Joining it at the festive table will be gravlax with Frank Camorra’s honey mustard dressing, cold ham with pineapple salsa from Bill’s Food by the late Bill Granger, and Sarah Pound’s fattoush. We’ll finish with cherries, home-made ice-cream and a rerun of Home Alone. “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal.”
Emily Holgate, assistant app editor
Each Christmas, my partner’s family takes inspiration from a particular cuisine and builds the menu around it. This year, we’re leaning into their Dutch-German heritage with a proper Deutsche kuche feast. The main event is pork knuckle. Schnitzel is also on the cards, as are pretzels from Geelong’s Born and Bread. Adam Liaw’s potato rosti and battered asparagus are top side-dish contenders. For dessert? A strudel of some kind. Plus Bavarian-style weissbier and schwarzbier (dark lager) from my family’s brewery.
Bianca Hrovat, Sydney restaurant editor
For me, holidays are a time to remember the recipes of relatives past. At Christmas, that means making nonna’s bolognese lasagne, which is pretty damn close to Brigitte Hafner’s. It’s a great one to assemble ahead of time, then throw into the oven after a long morning at the beach. Pair it with a leafy salad, dressed in a simple vinaigrette. Pavlova is for dessert, obviously. This year, I’ll try Helen Goh’s recipe with cherry compote.
Andrea McGinniss, eating in editor
I’m lucky enough to be invited to a friend’s lavish family lunch for 25+ and have offered to be on ham duty. I’ve had Katrina Meynink’s Christmas ham with negroni glaze bookmarked for years, and its time is now. And you bet I’ll be sipping a negroni and blasting Fairytale of New York while I baste it. Before that, we’ll snack on dirty martini dip and mortadella olives because phwoar! And to continue the boozy theme (hey, it’s Christmas!), I’ll bring rum baba in a jar – a pre-prepared Meatsmith pud I can’t wait to sink my spoon into.
Sarah Norris, head of Good Food
The Norris family are traditionalists, meaning we glaze a ham (we used Danielle Alvarez’s “easiest and best” recipe last year) and roast a big hunk of meat surrounded by vegies, salads and condiments. I’ve saved Adam Liaw’s porchettamasterclass to ensure we nail the crackling, and this year I will look to Yotam Ottolenghi for his roast potatoes (love his tip about adding rice flour for extra-crispy spuds). Mum always makes a very retro pineapple, mint and glace cherry salsa, which she serves in the scooped-out pineapple. It’s essential to cut through the richness. We’re also a big gravy household, and this recipe has come in handy.
Annabel Smith, innovation editor
I’ve already ticked Katrina Meynink’s grown-up toasted coconut rumballs off my Christmas list. Closer to the big day, I’ll be adorning a ham with a diamond hatch and Andrew McConnell’s spiced maple and amaro glaze, and my sister is eyeing off Adam Liaw’s new jewelled potato salad, twinkling with cranberries, cornichons, capers and smoked almonds. I’m not on dessert duty, but if I were, my tried and triple-tested trifle is a riff on Danielle Alvarez’s chocolate genoise and Pedro Ximenez caramel showstopper, subbing the coconut custard for Dan Lepard’s extra-thick whipped pastry cream, and kicking it old-school with packet raspberry jelly.
Erina Starkey, app editor
Our Christmas menu tends to revolve around the fresh produce Mum brings down from my hometown of Nundle, in the NSW New England region. This year, it’s looking like smoked trout from the Arc-en-Ciel Trout Farm, which will become Danielle Alvarez’s smoked trout dip served with radish butter and crudites, eggs for the potato salad, berries and baby pears for the cheese plate and honey for the ham glaze. We usually make a stone fruit salad. This year, I’ll add RecipeTin Eats’ candied almonds. Instead of pavlova, we’re finishing with ice-cream sundaes with Amarena cherries.
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