Sprouts shredded with Stilton, premixed cocktails, and ENORMOUS bottles of Prosecco: Christmas dinner with a twist but without the stress

Ah, December 25th, that magical, sparkly day when you’re still up at 3am finishing the wrapping, filling the stockings, peeling the potatoes and mixing the stuffing.

The fact that you have to wash your hair, dress the smaller relatives and then drive around collecting some of the older ones means it's only natural that you end up drinking some Prosecco to make weird Uncle Edmund’s stories slightly more bearable.

It's all enough to turn anyone into a Christmas Grinch.

Want to be as happy and relaxed as her?  Try some of our clever Christmas hacks to eliminate festive stress!

But this year help is at hand... from us! 

We’ve devised loads of amazing foodie hacks that put a jazzy twist on Christmas dinner while eliminating much of the kitchen-based stress so that you can concentrate on the important things: Prosecco. And more Prosecco.

From stirring Christmas pudding through your ice cream to sautéing sprouts with crumbled Stilton to take them to a WHOLE new level (we promise), these festive hacks will let you enjoy Christmas as much as the rest of your family do. You know, the ones with their feet up laughing at the telly while they scoff the Christmas chocolate selection box.

Merry Christmas!

Forget mixing drinks!

You could spend Christmas morning carefully infusing orange peel in sugar syrup and fishing Earl Grey teabags out of hot pans of gin. 

Or you could simply unscrew a bottle of pre-mixed cocktail and pour yourself a glass before the guests even arrive. 

You can seriously impress your guests (or, let's face it, yourself) this Christmas with a Mince Pie Martini 

Why slave away creating festive cocktails when you can simply pour them all straight out of the bottle! 

Marks & Spencer has a fabulous range of ready-made festive snifters, from a refreshing sparkling Sloe Gin Fizz (£5, 70cl), to a White Christmas Cocktail (£12, 50cl) made with yogurt liqueur, rum, vanilla and lemon and a Mince Pie Martini £12, 50cl) – which does exactly what it says on the bottle.

For chocoholics, the Black Forest Gateau Liqueur (£10, 35cl) is an absolute diamond, as is the Chocolate Yule Log Cream (£11, 70cl) – so decadently rich and moreish that we can’t quite believe it’s legal. Cheers!

Pickled red cabbage can easily be made in advance

'Make a week before' super-easy veg

The ultimate trick for a stress-free Christmas is to do as much as you can before The Big Day. Having a dish of chicken liver parfait, a bowl of roasted chilli nuts (cashews and macadamias are our favourite), a platter of beetroot gravadlax and a mug of crunchy cheese straws ready and waiting for hungry merrymakers will eliminate 94.7 per cent of the last minute panic.

Pickling red cabbage instead of stewing it on Christmas morning is a nifty DIA (do in advance) hack – plus, it adds a nice crunch to Christmas lunch, which can tend to be a bit... soft. Simply boil your favourite spices with ginger, chillies, garlic and heaps of sugar in lashings of vinegar (a mix of malt, red wine and balsamic) until the sugar has dissolved. Leave to infuse overnight, then fill sterilised jars with finely shredded red cabbage, and pour pickling liquor over top.

The longer you infuse the cabbage, the better it will taste. And if you label the jars prettily they also make lovely Christmas presents. Two birds, one stone and all that jazz.

Never-ending fizz (well, sort of)

Because let’s face it, you and yours are going to get through a fair few bottles of fizz, so you might as well save time opening them all by buying a really enormous one. Plus, they look ever so jazzy. Marks & Spencer’s beautiful Prosecco Magnum (£20) is easy on both eye and purse.

Cut down on cooking (and carving problems) with boneless birds

If the panic over squeezing an enormous turkey into your teeny oven and then figuring out how to carve the rascal is giving you palpitations, save yourself a trip to A&E by picking up one of Marks & Spencer’s British Easy Carve Oakham Turkey Breast Parcels (£20, 1.45kg). 

Magnums of Prosecco are always a good idea, while Turkey Breast Parcels also save time and cook fast

Made with tender breast meat and filled with caramelised orange and fig stuffing, this beauty slices like a dream and avoids arguments over who gets which bit of bird.

M&S’s British Duck Supreme Crown (£30, 1.4kg) - filled with a pork, plum, date and cherry stuffing then finished with a balsamic glaze - is a gamier alternative to a turkey, or a terrific Boxing Day option.

Angst-free roast potatoes (yes really!)

There’s a 40-second window during which your roast potatoes will come out perfect, otherwise they’re anaemic and hard, or they look like they’ve fallen asleep inside an active volcano. 

And that’s before we’ve started on arguments over whether you peel, parboil, dust with polenta and lower into hot duck fat, or just bung them whole into a tray of olive oil. 

Avoid angst and arguments with M&S’s fluffy, buttery and golden roast potatoes (Beef Dripping Roast Potatoes, £4 for 840g), already half-cooked in beef dripping, which roast to perfection in just 35 minutes. Easy. 

You can never have too many roast potatoes, while roast celeriac makes a super-easy veggie side dish

Easiest-ever veggie die dish

Nut roast, schmut roast.  Keep veggies happy in a quick and painless way by popping a whole, peeled celeriac in a baking dish, drizzling with olive oil, salt, pepper and any other savoury treats you like (we’re fond of garlic, paprika, lemon and thyme), splashing in some white wine, covering with a lid and leaving in the oven for a couple of hours. Also works with cauliflower. And swedes.

No-chop carrots

Slicing carrots is so 1996. These days all the cool kids cook them whole (peeled, if you must, but whole).

Whether you boil them with butter, salt, sugar, garlic and tarragon, or roast them with a little oil, is up to you, but you can enjoy your Christmas veg safe in the knowledge that you have not only saved time, but you are ON TREND. 

Forget chopping carrots endlessly; leave them whole and boil with butter, sugar, salt, garlic and tarragon

Souped up sprouts

Forget slicing off outer leaves, criss-crossing the bottoms, par-boiling and then hurling yourself under a bus with boredom - when it comes to Brussels sprouts we’re all about whizzing them in a food processor quickly (or halving them if you prefer),then sautéing the shreds in pancetta, butter and garlic. 

Season with salt, pepper, toasted hazelnuts and crumbled Stilton, then watch as even the fussiest of eaters dive in for thirds.

Sprouts served with bacon and blue cheese will have even the fussiest of eaters diving in for thirds

And what's even easier than shredded sprouts with Stilton?  A packet of M&S' super-creamy Brussels, deliciously muddled up with Applewood smoked bacon and buttery hazelnuts (£4.50 for 600g).  Because bacon improves everything.  FACT 

Ready-made sauces

Sauces hold Christmas lunch together like the frame of a beautiful painting that could otherwise be dry, cold and a little bit meh. But instead of spending your day shredding the turkey and frantically boiling its bones before finally sitting down to eat at half midnight on December 29th, let M&S do the hard work. 

There are so many dishes to get right on Christmas Day, it makes perfect sense to buy delicious sauces

Their Posh Poultry Gravy (£3, 400g) made with marsala wine and roast turkey stock is truly something to behold, and the veggie Onion Gravy (£2, 300g), made with roasted red onions is remarkably flavoursome, considering it’s never even seen a chicken. 

No self-respecting Christmas lunch plate would present itself without a bread sauce, and Marks & Spencer’s one (£3, 400g) is famous among bread sauce obsessives (I speak as one) for being a really, REALLY good alternative to home-made.  Meanwhile their Cranberry & Port Sauce (£3 for 400g), gives a good sweet, fruity kick. 

These pretty mince pies taste and look home-made

Easy mince pies

Why slave over bubbling cauldrons of dried fruit when you can buy a pack of ready made mince pies, warm them in the oven, dust them with icing sugar, and convince everyone they were your own handiwork? 

Marks & Spencer’s Christmas Star Mince Pies (£2.50, 318g) – crisp, all butter shortcrust filled with lashings of fruit, brandy and port – are perfect for the job. We won’t tell if you don’t.

Christmas pudding ice cream

For when Christmas pudding is too rich and vanilla ice cream too boring, there’s Christmas pudding ice cream: the Goldilocks of Christmas desserts. 

You could just follow your favourite vanilla ice cream recipe, stirring crumbled Christmas pudding into the ice cream maker.

Or take a super shortcut by stirring crumbled Christmas pudding into softened, shop-bought vanilla. 

Better yet, crumble half Christmas pudding and half pieces of meringue into softened ice cream to make all your foodie Christmases come at once.

Christmas pud crumbled into softened vanilla ice cream is a really easy and utterly delicious dessert

Easy 'hangover cure' ham for Boxing Day

Boxing Day food has to be something you can cook while mainlining aspirin and wearing an eye mask - and this ham is precisely that. 

Plus, it has loads of full-fat Coke in it, which everybody knows is the world’s best hangover cure. Just cook an enormous piece of gammon exactly as you normally would (we like cloves and the odd star anise), but use Coke instead of water. It’s sticky, treacly, salty and sweet – and the leftovers should keep you in sandwiches until New Year.

A whole ham studded with cloves and star anise and cooked in full-fat Coke makes a perfect Boxing Day lunch