salt, fat, acid and heat-ify your Christmas plate

Samin Nosrat and celebrating the good things

The way I see it, there is a finite number of mealtimes remaining in my life, and every shit one is a minor tragedy.

The tragedy is compounded if there is a lot of celebratory pressure on the meal, or it involves a lot of planning and preparatory work, and you're feeding it to a lot of excitable people. Yes, that's right, I'm talking Christmas dinner.

There might not be another meal in the year that’s got quite so much hanging on it. And yet—when you actually talk to people about how they feel about the Christmas plate, it’s really mixed. Common responses: beige, stodgy, I don’t even really like turkey.

And I get it. There are a series of heavy traditions sitting on the Christmas dinner plate. Feeding more people means you have to cater for a lot of different opinions and tastes, and the easiest thing to do is just stick to the way it’s always been done. There are a lot of moving parts, so you don’t want to innovate; you’ve got it down to a fine art just the way it is. The family elders, by the time we’re in our thirties, are probably sick of cooking the fucking thing, and so just want the cooking experience, at least, to be over. The joy is gone.

A few years ago, my partner and I basically took over the Christmas cooking duties for both our families (and the post-Christmas friendsmas that’s become a thing too). We enjoy it. The mums still help with the shopping part, because they start thinking about and booking that in about August which is far too early for anyone sane to get involved, and we are lucky that teams of pot-washers are on hand while we are cooking. But we also enjoy it, because we play to our strengths, don’t put too much pressure on it, drink cremant while we’re cooking and banish anyone unhelpful or annoying from the kitchen. And I think we’re pretty good at it too.

Because here’s the thing: there’s a cheat code for cooking anything beautifully—including Christmas dinner—and it was all laid out perfectly in Samin Nosrat’s debut cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, aka the book that changed the way I cook. The genius of Samin’s approach is its simplicity. Her thesis is that in order to elevate any meal to be the best version of itself, you simply have to consider the four elements laid out in the title, or as Samin calls them, the ‘four cardinal directions of cooking’: salt, fat, acid, and heat.

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How do we apply these four considerations to what, at its worst, can be a stodgy, bland, uninspired and excessively heavy plate? Let’s take a look.

salt

In this country, we don’t salt our food enough (according to me). However, the Christmas dinner plate is one of the few times everyone remembers that salt exists, and it’s already in a lot of packet mixes (gravy, stuffing, etc) that you might be using, so there’s the potential for the entire plate to become so salty that it overwhelms every other taste sensation. It’s worth really thinking about how much salt you are putting in your cooking at every stage of Christmas prep. I don’t mean do it less; I mean, do it better.

I’m not going to tell you to brine your bird. You could. You absolutely could brine your bird. I even know people who have. If you have a bath in your place and you’re the kind of person who’ll spend Christmas eve doing that, knock yourself out. I’m sure it’ll be amazing.

What I am going to tell you to do is to salt your bird the night before. This is technically a form of brining—dry-brining, if we’re being technical—and it’s not just about getting a crispy skin when it roasts. The salt actually changes the proteins in the meat, making the bird absorb more moisture, which will in turn make it juicer when you cook and eat it. Everyone complains about turkey being dry, and you can fix that with just five minutes of effort the night before. My partner also gives it a weird massage before the brining, including a Rocky-esque pummelling, which is intended to (and perhaps succeeds in) breaking down the proteins as well. The result is a turkey that avoids all the pitfalls of your prototypical shit dry flavourless Christmas bird. It’s 100% worth doing.

You should also definitely salt the water in which you parboil your potatoes. If there’s one thing that Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat taught me, it’s that salting the water in which your vegetables boil produces a completely different result to just salting those vegetables when you’re done. I even did the experiment; I boiled some in salted water and some not, and I taste-tested. They taste completely different, and if you’re the kind of person who won’t do anything until you’re given a clear explanation as to why you should, here it is: by salting the water you are creating a saline environment for the vegetables to draw in the correct amount of salt. You are letting them salt themselves. It always feels like you’re throwing a lot of salt into the water—and you are—but most of that will go down the drain.

Apply this to all of the vegetables you parboil. For me, that includes carrots, which always take about three times longer in the oven than you remember, and perhaps parsnips too. But don’t assume that this pre-salting is sufficient for the balance of your finished dish. Use standard table salt for the water, and keep your better salt for finishing, if you think that the dish still needs it.

Don’t just throw salt on things. Taste them first. They might be fine. If not: it’s Christmas. Get the good salt.

fat

One thing that we do well, in the UK, is to consider the fat elements of the Christmas dinner. It’s the only time of the year that anyone talks about goose fat and giblets, but it’s the right time. We throw bacon in where we may never throw bacon normally. We don’t hold back on the butter. All these things are distinctly correct.

One of the many ‘why didn’t I understand that already’ moments in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is the chart in which illustrator Wendy MacNaughton—whose substack art classes have since helped me to come back to drawing and painting for fun—lays out, with a gorgeous use of colour, the fats that are commonly used in different cuisines. Of course these correspond to what grows naturally in those areas. Of course it makes sense to consider this when you’re cooking a dish and are about to choose the oil. Of course it’s better to use sesame oil in a Chinese meal than butter or olive oil. It all makes such sense when you lay it out like that. Goose fat might be from a different bird, but it’s a lot more logical to coat a bird in bird fat than butter, when you think about it (and if it’s good for Nigel Slater, it’s good enough for you).

We are good at fat at Christmas, but still there are tips. Baste your turkey every half an hour as it cooks, which will help keep it moist. Preserve the cooking fat for the gravy, because that’s where all the flavour is. Once you’re parboiled and knocked about your roast potatoes, get your oil in a roasting tin and put it in the oven until it’s almost smoking hot, then tip the potatoes into it and quickly roll them around in it, being careful not to burn yourself. Spending just slightly more on butter will add an enormous amount of taste to the dish; Waitrose salted french butter is the same price as Sainsbury’s own and exponentially better, which I can say because I have tasted both. It’s only 75p more expensive than Lurpak, which has 50g less in it, and when you put it in those terms it seems stupid not to spring for the better stuff. If you live next to a farmer, maybe they’ll treat you to the secret good stuff, which I am convinced must exist.

acid

Learning to consider the acid in your meal is the single most impactful thing I learned from Samin Nosrat. We all know, on some level, about salt. Fat and heat kind of come naturally, even if we’re doing them poorly. But acid? When have you ever heard someone say—wait, this needs more citrus?

It was Samin that taught me that a single tablespoon of vinegar stirred into a bowl of vegetable soup will change the taste completely. It was Samin that made me understand why its so important to finish food with a squeeze or lemon or lime, and why I am on every level obsessed with pickles, and why using beer in certain recipes makes them truly incredible. To paraphrase a Clinton-era phrase: it’s the acid, stupid.

Learning to put some acid on your Christmas dinner plate is the single best thing you can do to make it better. It is so simple. If you want the cheat-level fix, here it is: pickled red cabbage.

It could not be easier to pickle red cabbage; here’s a very straight-forward recipe from Nigella, which you can modify as you like. Here’s a BBC Good Food version that I had cause to dig up last week when my partner’s niece asked about it; she said it was her enduring memory from a Christmas four or five years before. If you want to really lean into fresh and spicy flavours, you can use Samin’s own version, from Chez Panisse. Whichever recipe you use, you will make the cabbage ahead of time, so it takes another thing off your already busy day. And yet: this burst of acid, the blossom of hot pink in the middle of the sea of beige, will provide the perfect foil for the salty, fatty richness of everything else on the plate, not hiding the richness but enhancing it by standing in opposition to it. You can start with just the pickle, if you’re nervous, but by the time you’re a few years into thinking acidically you’ll be thinking about it for every one of the dishes on the table.

If, like me, you don’t eat meat, the acid element can be one around which you organise your main dish. In the last few years my go-to vegetarian Christmas dish has been roast pumpkin, or butternut squash, tossed together with pistachios and pomegranate seeds and some balsamic vinegar too. Bright, beautifully, delightfully astringent.

You can throw white wine into your gravy—or red if you’re making a vegan gravy, which will benefit from the richness. You can throw some pomegranate seeds in with your sprouts, which is actually ideal if you cook sprouts my favourite way (pan fried in olive oil, with bacon if you’re a meat eater, with maple syrup and salt). You can roast your bird with lemon halves inside then use those in the gravy making. You can squeeze lime on your honey-roasted carrots. You can use sourdough instead of regular bread in your stuffing. You can do all of the above.

And if you really want to lean in, you can apply this to the dessert as well. I am not a Christmas pudding fan, endlessly preferring either a tiramisu (which has the acidic coffee inside) or the marmalade steamed pudding I first ate at The Three Chimneys some years ago, but whatever your dessert is, let me let you into a secret that The Three Chimneys taught me: throwing Cointreau into your custard will send you straight to heaven.

(The year we introduced the marmalade pudding + boozy custard to the family Christmases, we ended up having to make FIVE.)

heat

In our family, it’s become a yuletide joke that whatever duration my mum tells you for the roasting of the turkey, you take 30-60 minutes off. The parental generation are afeared of undercooking meat, and that’s totally understandable—but it did make for a lot of dry-ass turkey meat. We have enough information now to change those ways, to ensure that it’s a moist, perfectly-cooked bird that reaches the Christmas table. Make sure you get a higher-welfare bird, as they don’t need to be cooked for quite as long. Nigel Slater says 2 hours and 25 minutes for a 4.5 kg turkey; the general consensus is that an unstuffed turkey needs 20 minutes per lb plus another 20. If it’s stuffed, this rises to 22 minutes per lb, plus the additional 20. I haven’t eaten meat in seventeen years and won’t be responsible for any Boxing Day food poisoning, but I can say we’ve used this matrix half a dozen times by now and haven’t managed to kill any family members yet.

Take the foil off your bird for the last half hour of roasting to let all that skin get crispy and great. You also need to rest your bird for AT LEAST half an hour after it’s pulled out of the oven. Do not even think about carving it until then. Forty-five minutes is perfect, and helps with the rush of everything else; just hand the turkey off to someone who is handy with a carving knife while you bring all the rest of the meal together. It’s a win-win situation, and the meat will be incredible.

But the bird is only a part of it. There is a sense, at Christmas, that everything has to be cooked in the oven. You’re roasting—so why not roast everything, if you’re not boiling it? But this gives rise to a uniformity in the cooking method which makes the plate uninteresting. There is no need to let things fall this way. Consider: the pan-fried Brussels sprout.

If there is one game-changer on our Christmas plate it is the pickled cabbage; if there are two, they are the cabbage and the sprouts. People hate sprouts because we have roundly fucked them up, as a nation. Brussels sprouts are actually delicious, and primed to be paired with things. Don’t just boil or roast and serve them up as sad little also-rans; like all second children, they need space to show off. Get them in a pan and fry those babies up. Butter, olive oil, rapeseed oil: whatever you want. But get them in a goddamn pan.

You don’t need a recipe, but there are many to use. If you eat meat, this chorizo breadcrumb version could be amazing. This version nears my own, adding a much-needed distraction of colour to the table; my version also utilises maple syrup as it is used here. Suddenly the sprouts will go from miserable ordeal to the star of the show.

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Really, though, there is only one rule you need to remember when you’re putting together a Christmas plate, and it’s this: It’s supposed to be enjoyable.

There’s a lot riding on a Christmas dinner, and many people’s expectations to consider. But also: life is too short to sit down to a meal that’s dictated entirely by tradition if it’s not what you want. You don’t have to have a fucking turkey. Have a goose. Have a duck. Have salmon! Go veggie! Or sack the whole thing off and have a chicken dopiaza, or a paella, or literally whatever you want. It’s the one day off the year when all bets are off. Drink something fizzy and delightful. Eschew tradition. Put on some elasticated pants and live how you want to.

Life is hard, and for many too short. In a global context, we are privileged beyond compare. If you have loved ones round your table, a full plate and a roof over your head, that’s worth celebrating.

Merry Christmas. May 2025 bring you happiness, calm, inspiration and joy, and may this year and many after see a free Palestine.

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P.S. Just make the fucking cabbage. Okay?

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My next novel Carrion Crow—a dark, physical book that ‘deduces an unutterable Gothic horror of class and gender from the pages of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management’—is forthcoming in Feb 27th 2024. You can support me, and this substack, by pre-ordering it here: