THE Christmas season means trees, tasty treats, and of course, turkey.
If you’ve put your blood, sweat, and tears into creating the perfect roast, only for the meat to seem a little dry, this hack may be for you.
Cooking Christmas dinner for your family can feel like a lot of pressure.
From prepping vegetables to making gravy, it can be difficult to balance everything.
Prepping your turkey in advance can seem like a good workaround to the stress.
And a small step can help to ensure heightened flavour and a perfectly moist finish.
So if you’d like to reduce your stress and enhance your main course, a budget buy may be the key to turning around your dinner.
Pick up a pack of chicken stock cubes for just 80p from your local Asda.
While you may be thinking the stock is for your gravy, it actually has an additional use.
Cooking experts at Mum In The Mad House shared a top tip for using stock cubes to elevate your turkey.
They recommended taking a couple of the stock cubes and “crumbling” them over the turkey skin before cooking.
Next, they suggest rubbing in the flavouring cube, covering your entire turkey.
This helps to marinate and enhance the flavour and seasoning of the turkey.
For additional flavour and enhanced moisture, they revealed an extra step.
The cooking pros advised any aspiring Christmas Day chefs to take some butter and place it under the turkey’s skin.
This will slowly spread throughout the bird as you cook it in your oven.
The experts also advised any creative cooks to cover their turkey with streaky bacon.
Consumer reporter Sam Walker reveals how you can save hundreds of pounds a year:
Odd boxes – plenty of retailers offer slightly misshapen fruit and veg or surplus food at a discounted price.
Lidl sells five kilos of fruit and veg for just £1.50 through its Waste Not scheme while Aldi shoppers can get Too Good to Go bags which contain £10 worth of all kinds of products for £3.30.
Sainsbury’s also sells £2 “Taste Me, Don’t Waste Me” fruit and veg boxes to help shoppers reduced food waste and save cash.
Food waste apps – food waste apps work by helping shops, cafes, restaurants and other businesses shift stock that is due to go out of date and passing it on to members of the public.
Some of the most notable ones include Too Good to Go and Olio.
Too Good to Go’s app is free to sign up to and is used by millions of people across the UK, letting users buy food at a discount.
Olio works similarly, except users can collect both food and other household items for free from neighbours and businesses.
Yellow sticker bargains – yellow sticker bargains, sometimes orange and red in certain supermarkets, are a great way of getting food on the cheap.
But what time to head out to get the best deals varies depending on the retailer. You can see the best times for each supermarket here.
Super cheap bargains – sign up to bargain hunter Facebook groups like Extreme Couponing and Bargains UK where shoppers regularly post hauls they’ve found on the cheap, including food finds.
“Downshift” – you will almost always save money going for a supermarket’s own-brand economy lines rather than premium brands.
The move to lower-tier ranges, also known as “downshifting” and hailed by consumer expert Martin Lewis, could save you hundreds of pounds a year on your food shop.
“Not only does it protect the breasts, it becomes crispy and is a real treat,” they pointed out.
To further reduce your stress, they suggested prepping one item days in advance.
The cooking enthusiasts explained that making your gravy in advance will give you one less thing to juggle.
You can prep your gravy and freeze it in the days leading up to the 25th.
Simply defrost the side dish as you prepare the rest of your Christmas dinner.
