For many, the magic of Christmas Day is overshadowed by the immense pressure of cooking a feast for the family. Suzanne Mulholland, a 49-year-old mother known online as The Batch Lady, once felt exactly this way, confessing she "hated" the festive day due to the culinary marathon it demanded.
"When the kids were little, I actually didn’t like Christmas. I didn’t feel it was my day," Mulholland explained. "I felt tied to the kitchen and missed key moments, like helping build Lego." Her solution, born from a busy family life, was to master the art of batch cooking, a method she now champions to help others reclaim their holiday.
The November Advantage: Spread Cost and Effort
Mulholland advocates starting your festive food preparation as early as November. This strategy not only spreads the financial burden of the Christmas shop but also capitalises on quieter moments before the December diary fills up with school fetes, carol concerts, and work parties.
"You can do it all in November, when you don’t have every other activity going on," she advises. The approach involves two key methods: 'cook ahead' and 'grab and cook'. The former involves fully cooking dishes to freeze and reheat later, while the latter is about prepping ingredients to be cooked from frozen on the day.
Mastering the 'Cook Ahead' Method
Numerous classic Christmas accompaniments freeze beautifully after being fully cooked. Mulholland recommends preparing and freezing items like bread sauce, cranberry sauce, roast potatoes, and shredded Brussels sprouts with pancetta well in advance.
Homemade Yorkshire puddings, mulled wine red cabbage, and even desserts like panettone bread and butter pudding are also perfect candidates. "The whole point of freezer cooking is that you use recipes that are meant to be frozen," she says, reassuring that flavour isn't compromised. "A lot of things actually taste better if you’ve cooked them in advance."
The 'Grab and Cook' Strategy for Freshness
This technique is about intelligent prep, not cooking the entire meal in advance. "We’re still cooking Christmas dinner. We’re just not prepping everything from scratch," Mulholland clarifies. The idea is to assemble components into a ready-to-cook state.
For instance, you can mix stuffing and shape it into balls, wrap bacon around sausages for pigs in blankets, or parboil and season roast vegetables before flash-freezing them. Creating a complete "meal prep kit" in November—with herby butter for the turkey, streaky bacon, stuffing mix, and the frozen bird all together—means everything is on hand and ready to defrost and cook, eliminating last-minute panic.
Beyond Christmas Day: Easing the Entire December
Mulholland's wisdom extends beyond the 25th. To navigate the hectic run-up, she batch cooks a selection of nutritious one-pot meals like pork and mustard traybakes or coconut curries to freeze. Having these 'December dinners' ready prevents costly and stressful last-minute takeaways on busy weeknights.
"It’s automatically going to cost you more money – and that’s a normal work day," she notes. "So you take that tenfold into the busiest December, and you are racking up a lot of money and a lot of stress." Her methods, shared through her social media channels and new book, 'The Batch Lady Saves Christmas', offer a practical blueprint for a calmer, more enjoyable festive season for the cook.
