Trusted British chef recipes, tested at home
Mary Berry’s Christmas vegetable gratin is parsnips, butternut squash, potatoes, leeks and broccoli baked in a creamy crème fraîche sauce under golden Parmesan. It serves 6 and takes about an hour, with only 20 to 25 minutes in the oven. Berry calls it Gratin of Winter Roots and Broccoli in Mary Berry’s Family Sunday Lunches …
Mary Berry’s mincemeat and marzipan tarts are crisp orange pastry cases filled with mincemeat and chopped apricots, topped with grated marzipan that bakes golden. The recipe makes 12, and takes about 55 minutes from start to finish. Berry calls them Mincemeat and Orange Feathered Tarts in Mary Berry’s Absolute Favourites (2015). Instead of a pastry …
Mary Berry’s sage and onion stuffing is a soft, savoury stuffing made with simmered onions, fresh sage, butter and white breadcrumbs, baked until golden and crisp on top. It serves 8 and takes about 55 minutes, mostly hands-off. The recipe comes from Mary Berry’s Christmas Collection (2013), where she calls it “a really good recipe …
Mary Berry’s Christmas roast turkey is a 5kg bird roasted under a loose foil tent with butter and streaky bacon, stuffed at the neck with chestnut stuffing. It serves 12, and roasts for about 3 hours 20 minutes, plus 30 minutes resting. The recipe comes from Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook (2024), where she calls it …
Jamie Oliver’s Christmas salad is crisp bitter leaves, pear and apple matchsticks and clementine rounds. It’s tossed in a honey mustard and walnut dressing, needs no cooking, and serves 8 in 20 minutes. Jamie layers four bitter leaves from the chicory and endive family, plus rocket, and cuts each one differently. Frisée is roughly chopped, …
Nigella Lawson’s panettone stuffing squares are savoury Christmas canapés: panettone blitzed with pancetta, apple, shallot, chestnut, sage and lemon, baked in a tray and cut into little squares like savoury brownies. It makes 48 small squares, from her book Nigellissima. She’s written a panettone stuffing before (the fruit bread cubed, toasted and mixed with Italian …
Nigella Lawson’s no-churn brandied pumpkin ice cream is a spiced, warm-flavoured ice cream made from pumpkin purée, condensed milk, cream, nutmeg and brandy, with no ice-cream maker needed. It makes about 1 litre, from her book Simply Nigella. It was born from leftovers: having made her Pumpkin Bundt Cake, she had a little pumpkin purée …
Nigella Lawson’s roast duck with orange, soy and ginger is a two-stage duck, steam-roasted then roasted hot, served with an aromatic orange, soy and ginger broth-gravy. It serves 4 to 6, from her book At My Table. She developed it to improve on her old How to Eat method, which involved poaching the ducks in …
Jamie Oliver’s roast venison with Barolo and chocolate sauce wraps coffee-and-rosemary-rubbed venison loin in prosciutto, roasts it blushing pink, and serves it with a dark, silky sauce built from roasted venison bones simmered in Barolo and finished with dark chocolate and butter. The sauce alone takes three hours. The whole thing serves ten and is …
James Martin’s lobster thermidor folds cooked lobster meat through a rich sauce of white wine, fish stock, double cream and Dijon with chanterelles, enriches it with egg yolks, then piles it back into the shells under a Parmesan and breadcrumb topping and grills it golden. Served with a pile of matchstick fries, it takes under …