Make The Perfect Christmas Feast

With Christmas just around the corner, you're probably starting to fill your cupboards and fridge with tasty food to enjoy over the festive period.

You could have stockings full of presents but the thing that most people look forward to on Christmas day? The food!

Here's our guide to preparing the perfect festive feast.

In the run up to the big day...

If you're a dab hand in the kitchen, you probably want to whip up a variety of treats for the Christmas season. With so many parties, family gatherings and festive work days in the coming weeks, cakes, buns and mince pies are always at the top of everyone's wish-list.

Take the stress out of your baking days with a food mixer. Mixing ingredients, especially sugar and butter, is everyone's least favourite part of baking, and a food mixer does all the hard work for you. It also takes a lot less time, so you can squeeze baking into your busy schedule or use it as an excuse to make double the amount!

Christmas Dinner

On Christmas Day, you probably have one family member who takes over the kitchen, has their timings down to a tee and refuses any help. But, no matter how organised you are, cooking the biggest, most important meal of the year for the entire family could do with a helping hand.

One of the biggest decisions when it comes to Christmas Dinner is what meat to choose. Turkey is the traditional choice, whereas a lot of people tend to go for a more succulent chicken, which is easier to cook, or a four bird roast. There's also the choice of ham, beef, lamb or pork, which also prove popular.

If you wanted to do a few different choices to suit everyone, why not put a joint in the slow cooker overnight? That way you won't have the stress of catering for different tastes on the day, and it will add a bit of variety to the table.

Carving the turkey can be a real hassle, so why not try an electric knife to cut your meat neatly and quickly? The blade will ensure that your bird doesn't tear, shred or pull, and will cut through the skin and meat much better than a regular knife.

One major problem when making Christmas dinner is how much room you have in your kitchen. Unless you have a huge agar oven with multiple hobs, you probably don't have enough cooking space for all your pots and pans. A table top hob is perfect if you need a little extra space for par-boiling your potatoes and cooking a variety of tasty and colourful vegetables to accompany your trimmings.

If you want to stay as healthy as possible over the festive period, try steaming your vegetables to create an array of colourful and wholesome extras on your plate. A steamer locks in all the vitamins and goodness meaning you know that you and your family are having all the good nutrients alongside the Christmas chocolates and treats.

What to do with the leftovers...

You always have leftovers, no matter how many people you cook for. It's always better to have more food than you need. Leftovers are one of the great things about Christmas – you always have a fridge full of food to snack on and make other meals with!

When it comes to turkey, you usually have a tonne of it left over, so strip it all off the carcass after you've finished your meal and store it in tupperware boxes in the fridge, ready to make something more exotic than a turkey sandwich the next day.

As part of your Boxing Day celebrations, why not whip up a turkey curry in an Actifry?

Here's a handy recipe that will make a delicious meal from your leftovers:

• Leftover turkey (around 500g) cut into chunks
• 100g Tikka Masala curry paste
• 2 pots of natural low fat yoghurt
• 1 Actifry spoon of vegetable oil
• 1 large finely chopped onion
• Can of chopped tomatoes
• 150ml water
• ½ teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons of lemon juice

Simply marinate your turkey then add the ingredients together in an Actifry. You can find more recipes on the Actifry website.

Now that you have everything you need, you're set for a fantastic Christmas spread over the festive period.

Let us know what you like to serve up on Christmas Day in the comments below!