Christmas Recipes from around the World
Looking for Christmas recipes with a little more variety? You’re in the right place.
Here you’ll find traditional Christmas favourites alongside festive recipes from around the world, with ideas for Christmas dinner, starters, sides, desserts, baking, party food and drinks.
There are British classics, European favourites and plenty of recipes inspired by the Middle East and Asia, because Christmas dinner really doesn’t have to look the same in every house.
Christmas Food for However You Celebrate
Christmas food means very different things to different people.
For some, Christmas Day revolves around roast turkey, potatoes, vegetables and Christmas pudding. For others, the table might include seafood, rice dishes, curries, pasta, mezze or food drawn from several different cultures.
And plenty of us fall somewhere in between.
That’s very much how we eat in my house. I love the traditional Christmas dishes I grew up with in the UK, but my Singaporean background and years spent cooking food from around the world inevitably find their way onto the Christmas table too.
So this collection isn’t about creating one supposedly perfect Christmas menu. It’s about finding food you actually want to cook and eat.
Christmas Dinner Recipes
The main event may be traditional, completely unconventional or a bit of both.
If you want a proper roast centrepiece, my Marmalade Roast Turkey has citrus, spice and just enough sweetness to make it feel rather more interesting than a plain roast bird.
But turkey certainly isn’t compulsory.
Fish and seafood make wonderful festive mains too. My Three Fish Roast is made with two sides of salmon filled with smoked haddock and prawns, and makes a particularly impressive pescatarian Christmas centrepiece.
For something completely different, there’s my Christmas Risotto, which can be topped with fish or kept vegetarian.
These are also useful options if you’re cooking for a smaller Christmas gathering, when roasting an enormous bird for four people seems faintly ridiculous.
And if your Christmas meal includes rice, pasta or a curry alongside the roast potatoes, you’ll receive no judgement from me.
Christmas Starters, Sides and Party Food
Some of my favourite festive recipes aren’t the main course at all.
Christmas is as much about the food before and around the big meal as it is about the centrepiece: dips, small plates, soups, vegetables, salads and dishes you can put on the table for everyone to help themselves.
This is also where recipes from the Middle East and Mediterranean work particularly well.
Mezze dishes, dips and vegetable recipes are brilliant for Christmas entertaining because several can be made ahead and brought out when people arrive.
You’ll also find more substantial dishes that can work either as a starter or part of a Christmas buffet, depending on how you’re feeding everyone.
Vegetarian and Pescatarian Christmas Recipes
A Christmas menu doesn’t need meat at every turn.
LinsFood has plenty of vegetarian recipes that can be served as part of a festive spread, from vegetable dishes and dips to rice dishes and more substantial mains.
For pescatarians, fish and seafood are particularly good at Christmas. My Three Fish Roast was created specifically as a festive centrepiece, while the Christmas Risotto can be served with fish or made completely vegetarian.
They’re useful options if you’re feeding a table where everyone eats differently — which, in my experience, is most Christmas tables these days.
Christmas Desserts and Baking
Now we’re getting to the important bit.
If you want something properly traditional, you’ll find my Traditional Christmas Pudding here. It’s the one I’ve been making since my twenties and remains one of my favourite parts of Christmas dinner.
There’s also an Alcohol-Free Christmas Pudding that happens to be vegan and gluten free as well, so nobody needs to sit watching everyone else eat pudding.
Beyond the classics, you’ll find cakes, cheesecakes, cookies and desserts from different parts of the world that work beautifully during the festive season.
Not everything needs holly stuck on top of it to qualify as Christmas dessert.
Christmas Drinks
Naturally, we also need something to drink.
There are festive cocktails, homemade liqueurs and drinks you can make for entertaining or giving as Christmas gifts.
A proper Mulled Wine is always welcome when it’s cold outside, but alcohol-free guests shouldn’t be condemned to fizzy water while everybody else gets something interesting.
My Christmas Cranberry and Ginger Tonic is made with a homemade cranberry and ginger syrup and can largely be prepared ahead.
And for anyone wanting something considerably less innocent, there’s the Christmas Alexander, involving Baileys, chocolate and cream.
It goes down rather more easily than something that potent really ought to.
Make-Ahead Christmas Recipes
The best Christmas recipe is sometimes simply the one you don’t have to cook at 12.45 pm on Christmas Day.
Anything that can be prepared ahead gets my vote.
The Traditional Christmas Pudding is meant to be made weeks ahead, while the Alcohol-Free Christmas Pudding can also be made in advance.
The cranberry and ginger syrup for my Christmas Cranberry and Ginger Tonic can be made up to a week before you need it too.
Dips, sauces and many curries and slow-cooked dishes can also be prepared in advance, while some recipes are actually better after a night in the fridge.
I’ve always been a great believer in planning Christmas food before the day itself. Work out what can be cooked ahead, what needs the oven and what can simply be reheated or assembled.
Your future Christmas Day self will be grateful.
Christmas Recipes from Different Cultures
One of the things I love most about Christmas cooking is how readily food traditions travel and mingle.
The Christmas recipes here aren’t restricted to British or European food. You’ll also find Middle Eastern, North African and Asian flavours throughout the collection.
Some are traditional festive recipes from their own cultures. Others are dishes I think work particularly well as part of a Christmas meal or during the wider holiday season.
That’s LinsFood in a nutshell, really: recipes rooted in their own food cultures, with plenty of room on the table for all of them.
If you’re specifically looking for Singaporean and Malaysian Christmas recipes, including Eurasian favourites, you’ll find those over on Singaporean & Malaysian Recipes.
Singaporean and Malaysian Christmas Recipes
Have a family Christmas recipe you’d like to share with me? I’d love to hear about it. And if there’s something you’re looking for that you don’t see here, let me know.
