Cooking Ahead for the Holidays Without Making the Holidays Feel Like Work

Holiday cooking has a strange ability to expand until it occupies every available hour.

One dish becomes six. Somebody remembers a dessert from 1998. A guest is bringing another guest. The refrigerator becomes a puzzle. By the time everyone sits down, the person who did the cooking needs a holiday from the holiday.

It does not have to work that way.

The first step is deciding what actually matters.

Most families have one or two dishes that carry the occasion. Those deserve attention. Everything else is negotiable.

If the bread dumplings are non-negotiable, make the bread part of the plan rather than an emergency. If a particular pie matters, the dough can be made ahead. Stocks, sauces, braised dishes, desserts and many side dishes are often better when part of the work happens before the day itself.

Then think about the refrigerator as carefully as the menu.

What needs to chill? What can be reheated? What must be cooked at the last minute? Which serving dish will it go into? A few minutes of planning can prevent the annual discovery that every dish requires the oven at exactly the same temperature at exactly the same time.

We also believe in editing.

A table with four excellent things is better than a table with eleven things that exhausted the cook.

And there is nothing wrong with letting someone else take part of the work.

Savoyage's role around the holidays can be as simple as helping prepare food ahead, organizing what will be served when, or making sure there are genuinely good meals available in the days when family is arriving and nobody wants to think about Tuesday's lunch.

The point of holiday food is memory, generosity and pleasure.

The cook should get to have some of that too.

---

Related Reading

• The First Cool Evening Calls for Something from the Oven
• September in the Kitchen: The Best of Two Seasons
• In-home personal chef service — seasonal cooking for seniors