Is a Healthy Christmas Dinner Possible?

Food and Christmas go together like mince pies and brandy butter; one is not properly complete without the other.

You might be in the camp that believes in eating as much as is physically possible on December 25th, believing that indigestion tablets are the true taste of Christmas.

However, you might be a little more conscious of what you’re eating on the big day. Maybe you enjoyed your pre-Christmas health kick and want to stick to it; perhaps you’ve got a NYE outfit you really want to fit into; or maybe your health prevents you from overindulging. But this doesn’t mean you have to sit in the corner with a salad while everyone else tucks into a huge plate of turkey with all the trimmings.

It is possible to have a healthy Christmas dinner if that’s what you want. And it’ll still taste amazing – so much so that you could serve it to the whole family and they wouldn’t even know it was a dieter’s dinner. Trust us.

The first course is probably the easiest to make healthy on Christmas Day. Lots of people have melon for their starter anyway and you simply can’t get any healthier than fruit. Jazz up your melon this year by waving goodbye to the classic ball shapes or traditional slices by using festive-shaped cookie cutters to slice up your fruit.

Bits of melon shaped like stars, Christmas trees or even gingerbread men will make a fruit course seem all the more fun to little ones – and big kids.

If you’d prefer a warm first course – it is December, after all – blending veg to make soup is soup-er comforting (see what we did there?!) and tasty. It’s also a good way to use up all the extra veg you accidentally boiled, because we all go a little crazy at Christmas and prepare piles of carrots taller than ourselves.

Put in a little lean meat too and you’ve got Christmas dinner soup! It’ll save you having to make something extra, so it really couldn’t be easier and it’ll be kind to your waistline – soup-er indeed (sorry, we can’t help ourselves).

Turkey is one of the leanest meats there is, so if that’s your Christmas dinner meat of choice, simply removing the skin and any fat will make it as healthy as it can be.

If you usually go for beef or goose, these are fattier, so you will need to spend more time trimming off that fat – think of the wonders this will do for your arm muscles! – or you could switch to turkey for a change.

It can be hard to resist all of the trimmings that go with Christmas meat though – pigs in blankets, cranberry sauce and sausagemeat-based stuffing are the best bits of Christmas dinner for many. You could treat yourself to these and tweak everything else on your plate, or you could go down the stew route.

A stew might not be traditional at Christmas, but traditions are there to be broken – or is that rules? Either way, you can do whatever you want on Christmas Day (within reason).

Add the lean meat of your choice, potatoes and the same veggies everyone else is eating (sprouts, carrots, cauli, broccoli, parsnips, peas etc) to your Tefal Cook4Me and let it do the work for you. For the sauce, use either stock or a tin of tomatoes or a mix of both. Tip: beef stock added to chopped tomatoes makes a gravy-like sauce that’ll be kinder to your waist.

If you can’t live without stuffing, check out the Minimalist Baker’s recipe for a simple vegan stuffing that’s packed with goodness and incredibly tasty.

Roasties are the greatest part of any roast dinner, even with all the extra trimmings that come out at Christmas. But they’re not the healthiest part by any stretch, especially when cooked in goose fat to make them crispy… But fear not, the ActiFry is here to help! (The Tefal ActiFry is not just for chips. Repeat: The Tefal ActiFry is not just for chips.)

As you only need a small splash of oil in the ActiFry, it’s a great way to do your roast potatoes for Christmas Day. You can even use a low-calorie cooking spray instead of oil if you prefer. Either way, it’s a great way to make leaner roasties that are still mega crispy and taste amazing. And you don’t even need to par-boil them first. Genius, if we say so ourselves.

Mince pie ice cream doesn’t sound like something that can be made healthy, right? Well, you’re wrong! You can in fact make ice cream from eggs and fat-free yoghurt, or even just from bananas and your flavourings of choice. Yes, you did read that right.

Neon Rainbow has an insanely easy recipe for healthy ice cream that you can easily add your own festive twist to. You could add in a handful of chocolate chips, but you could also add mincemeat (the fruit kind, not beef, obvs).

Mincemeat is just fruit and a bit of alcohol, so it’s not the worst treat you could be eating on Christmas Day, and popping it in your homemade fat-free ice cream is definitely better than eating it surrounded by pastry and slathered in brandy butter. Although that does sound good…

Watching your weight at Christmas doesn’t have to mean having no treats whatsoever, just pick one or two rather than everything! If you’ve got a slice of Christmas cake to look forward to after your lean dinner or gorgeous pigs in blankets waiting for you after your melon, this dieting lark won’t seem so bad at all.

Stick to it and you’ll feel gloriously smug after Christmas when you get back to the office to find everyone else has gained a stone and is on the salad for the foreseeable, while you’re tucking into another tasty stew with roasties or chips.