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Ligia Luga is a Nicaraguan chef and recipe developer, and founder of The Darling Kitchen. She spoke to Express.co.uk about Christmas dinner, detailing her top tips.
She had one major warning about cooking the turkey and the stuffing.
“Don’t cook the stuffing in the turkey,” the foodie warned.
“Cooking the stuffing inside makes it harder to cook properly and can make it soggy.
“If you cook it separately you end up with a perfectly crispy stuffing that hasn’t been in contact with raw turkey.”
In fact, while stuffing, by the very nature of its name, is often put in the turkey, this could be ruining your Christmas meal.
If you cook until the turkey is done the stuffing will be undercooked.
However, cooking till the stuffing is cooked will leave the turkey overdone.
Underdone stuffing will still have raw turkey juices in it, a potential health risk.
Plus, underdone stuffing is soggy. Cooking it on a tray is beneficial for the turkey, the stuffing, and those who eat both.
Ligia provided a number of other Christmas dinner tips.
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Christmas dinner tips
Pre-prep as much as you can
Anything that can be done in advance should be done in advance.
Having all the tedious stuff like rinsing and chopping checked off your to-do list will be a huge time saver.
Make a list of all the things that can be done ahead of time and finish those tasks early.
That way all you have left is assembling and heating.
Jamie Oliver explains how to put stuffing inside a turkey
Write down a cooking timeline and stick to it
Plan what needs to be started when as well as the specifics for the meal (oven temperature, special ingredients, etc.)
Clean as you go
You will regret not doing this when the festive dinner is over and you have to clean up after the guests in addition to washing everything used in the cooking process.
Even if you have only five minutes between cooking tasks wash some of the tools you have used so far. This will greatly reduce the cleaning you have to do later.
Don’t try recipes for the first time
I learned this the hard way. Avoid experimenting and testing recipes out for the first time.
You may feel that it’s not much of a risk but with the stress of preparing a festive dinner, the last thing you’ll need is to wonder if that fancy new recipe you read yesterday and decided to include at the last minute will turn out fine.
You can nail it on the first try but why risk the stress and the possibility to be left with a subpar dish on Christmas.
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