Usually you think of ham or turkey for Christmas dinner, but what about roast beef? Some home cooks are scared away from beef because it’s expensive and confusing to cook. Well, Arlene shows there’s no need to be afraid with her “never fail” recipe! Plus, she makes traditional Yorkshire puddings, two kinds of potatoes, Brussels sprout gratin, punch bowl cake, and more. This great episode from 2004 will leave you hungry for more!
Brussels Sprout Gratin
This creamy, cheesy dish transforms humble Brussels sprouts into an elegant side.
Ingredients
- 2 pounds Brussels sprouts: trimmed, out leaves removed, and cut in halves
- 3 tbsp melted butter
- salt and pepper
- 1 cup coarse breadcrumbs (from a hearty white bread, like a baguette)
- 1/4 cup finely grated Gruyere cheese
- 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place sprouts in a shallow 9 x 13-inch baking dish that will hold them in a snug layer. Toss with 2 tablespoons melted butter, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and several grinds of pepper. Spread evenly in dish and roast, tossing once or twice, until browned in spots and tender when pierced with a knife (25 to 30 minutes).
- While the sprouts roast, combine the bread crumbs with the remaining 1 tablespoon melted butter and 1/8 teaspoon salt in a small bowl. Mix in the grated Gruyere cheese.
- When the Brussels sprouts are tender and browned, pour the cream over them and continue baking until the cream has thickened to a saucy consistency that coats the sprouts (5 to 7 minutes). Remove the pan from oven. Set oven to broil and position a rack to 6-inches below the broiler. Sprinkle on the breadcrumb mixture. Broil the gratin until the crust is deep golden brown (about 5 minutes). Makes 6 servings. Enjoy!
Punch Bowl Cake
This is essentially a trifle, but it looks all the more magnificent in a giant punch bowl.
Ingredients
- 1 box yellow cake mix (prepared according to package directions)
- 2 containers whipped topping (8 oz, each)
- 2 cans cherry pie filling (large size)
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 1 large box instant vanilla pudding (6 serving size)
- 1 regular box instant vanilla pudding (4 serving size)
- milk to prepare pudding mixes
- 1 jar maraschino cherries with stems
Instructions
- Bake yellow cake mix according to directions on box. Let cool. Prepare both puddings and mix together in a bowl. Prepare pudding mixes according to package directions, and let chill in the refrigerator.
- In a punch bowl, large glass bowl, or a trifle dish, place 1/2 can of cherry pie filling and spread evenly. Crumble 1/2 of the cooled cake and sprinkle over pie filling. Spoon 1/2 of the pudding over the cake, sprinkle with 1/2 of the drained pineapple, another 1/2 can cherry pie filling, 1 carton whipped topping, and 1/2 cup chopped pecans.
- Repeat layers until ingredients are used up. Cover and refrigerator overnight (the longer the better). To serve, drain maraschino cherries and place stemmed cherries decoratively on top. Serves 10 to 15 people, depending on the size of the portions. Refrigerate any leftovers. Enjoy!
Carrot Ambrosia Salad
This fancy salad takes carrots and makes them into something really special.
Ingredients
- 1 pound carrots (peeled, washed, and shredded)
- 1 can crushed pineapple, drained (20 oz)
- 1 carton sour cream (8 oz)
- 3/4 cup flaked, sweetened coconut
- 3/4 cup golden raisins
- 2 tbsp honey
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients and toss well. Cover and chill until ready to serve. Makes 8 servings. Enjoy!
Never-Fail Roast Beef Dinner
This roast beef recipe is sure to please a crowd for a fancy dinner.
Ingredients
- 1 3-4 pound beef English or rump roast
- 1 envelop dry onion soup mix
- 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup (11 oz)
- 6-8 white potatoes, peeled and quartered
- 6 sweet potatoes, peeled and quartered
- 1/4 pound mushroom, cleaned and sliced
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place roast in roasting pan large enough to accommodate meat and vegetables. Evenly sprinkle dry soup mix over meat. Spoon mushroom soup over mix and spread soup to completely cover top of meat. DO NOT ADD WATER.
- Arrange potatoes, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms around meat. Cover and roast in preheated oven about 3 hours until tender. Can be baked longer at a lower temperature. Makes 6 to 8 servings. Enjoy!
Yorkshire Pudding
This classic English favorite is a great addition to a holiday table.
Ingredients
- 1 cup flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup milk
- 2 eggs (lightly beaten)
- 1/2 cup melted butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a bowl, combine all ingredients and beat at a low speed using an electric mixer, just until smooth. Using a 12 cup muffin pan, do not grease or preheat pan. Spoon 1 teaspoon melted butter into each muffin cup; tilt to coat cup evenly. Add batter.
- Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake an additional 18 to 20 minutes until puffed and golden. Serve immediately. Makes 12 puddings. Enjoy!
- Note: If you have beef drippings from your meat, use in place of melted butter in each muffin cup. It's delicious!
Transcript
- Well, Merry Christmas, everybody. I hope that you’re up for the day. This is our Christmas dinner show, and I hope that by now you have some good idea of what you’re gonna prepare for your Christmas dinner and if you don’t have it completely planned, we’re gonna give you some ideas, okay? The set is totally decorated, our kitchen’s ready, the smells in this kitchen are awesome. Today, we’re gonna do an old fashioned English style roast beef dinner, Yorkshire pudding, with all the trimming. So you do wanna stay tuned for that. I hope we’re keeping our focus amidst all the activity on what this is really all about. If it wasn’t for Jesus, there’d be nothing to celebrate really. Not for Christmas, ’cause that’s what Christmas is Christ. Christ is Christmas, okay? No matter what the world’s telling you, remember, it’s the birthday of the king. It’s the birthday of the savior, the Messiah of the world. Isaiah, thousands of years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, here’s what he had to say. “For unto unto us a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace and of the increases of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord almighty will accomplish this. In the midst of what’s going on in the world, Jesus is the prince of peace and that’s who we’re celebrating today. He’s the reason for the season. Don’t forget to keep him in the rightful place in your heart throughout this time and all throughout the year. Well, come on back in just a minute ’cause we’re gonna get started with our Christmas dinner. We’ll be back right after this hint. Well, I hope you know that we certainly mean they’re greeting from all our staff and all the guys that work and the girls that work on this production, we do wish you and yours, a very, very Merry Christmas. Hope this is a wonderful time of the year for your family. First of all, to start off our Christmas dinner, this is called a punch bowl cake. I know you have the cookies and the nut rolls but this is so neat and this looks so pretty, we thought we’d do something special. We have a can of cherry pie filling. We’re gonna use about half of it and just spoon that right in the bottom of our punch bowl. That’s why it’s called punch bowl cake. And we got Brad over here on the food cam today. Nice to have you Brad. We’re glad you’re working it. Okay, now what we do next we take, we’ve just baked a plain yellow cake mix in a plain pan like you normally would and then I’ve cut it up with a knife into little cubes and I’m gonna take half of the cake, basically, you just crumble that in the bottom there. Half of the cake goes in next. And you wanna use a bowl, if you don’t have a punch bowl, you wanna use a nice bowl that is like a glass bowl so you can see through, because part of it is seeing this ’cause it’s so pretty. It makes such a presentation. And you wanna make sure that you get all around the edges, make an even layer if you can. Use the whole half of the cake, just like they crumbled a little bit. So it isn’t in cubes. It’s a real moist fresh cake. So it’ll work good. Push it to the sides. Okay. Now, after we’ve done that, now we’re going to sprinkle some pudding, not sprinkle we’ll spoon it, okay. This is some instant pudding. We’re gonna use half of this, a large package in a small package. So we’re going to spoon that right over top of… Ugh! Of this. This is incredible. You’re gonna take your spoon and just smooth it around just like that. Spoon it in. Just set this down. Keep spooning it around. Make sure you make it nice and level if you can. Okay? There we go. Now, after that, I’m following my recipe so I do it right. Now we have some drained pineapple, well drained. We’re gonna use half of it. And that we’re gonna just sprinkle on top of the pudding. Now the thing I like about this is that you can do this the day ahead and you have it. You don’t have to worry about it ’cause you’ve already got it done, you cover it up, put in the fridge and bring it out on Christmas day for your dessert. Okay, we have cherries, the cake, pudding, the drained pineapple and then we’re going to put the other half can of the first can of cherries, we’re gonna pour that over top. Just like that. This one, you’re using half cans at a time so it will be all right. And we’re just gonna spread that nice and evenly around. Here we go. Hope you can see this, ’cause this is awesome. All right. Now we do one cool whip. This is an eight ounce carton, we’re gonna do the whole carton. Now this is gonna feed a lot of people. Let me tell you that. But you can imagine when you’re making in this big punch bowl and you’re spreading the whole thing around. Turn that upside down. We go. Just keep spreading it, make sure it gets to the edge of the punch bowl. You want that color to be seen. Okay, now we’re gonna continue ’cause the next layer is some pecans. And in that we’re going to use a cup but we’re gonna use half and just sprinkle those on. But a half a cup of pecans goes next. Now, you think you’re done? Absolutely not, because we’re gonna start with our layering all over again. Here we go again. We’re gonna do half a can of cherries. Now I’ll tell you what if you didn’t wanna do the double layer you wouldn’t have to, but I know that you’d want to because this is so impressive. Especially if you’re gonna have even a buffet for your Christmas dinner. I mean, if it’s not a sit down, it’s a buffet, this is something everybody’s gonna want. Trust me. Okay. So we do that. What comes next? I’m taking your questions here. I’m asking for answers. The cake, right? We’re gonna put the cake on next. All the cake that’s left goes on next. Like that. Just sprinkle it around. Push it to the edge. Always pushing it to the edge, whole way around. Let me get rid of this can ’cause it’s in my way. There we go. Okay, all the cake and it’s nice ’cause this is nice yellow cake. Nice and moist. You wanna use a low fat one, you could. If you want to cut this down as much as you could by using like the low cream or the low whatever, you can do that. Okay. Next what comes after that? Let me see. After we do the cold cake now we’re gonna spoon the pudding. Okay. Pudding goes all over the top. Like that. I’ll tell you this instant pudding is wonderful too. Incredible. Okay. This is a big dessert, but it’s something that will feed, like I said before, a lot of people so I know you’re gonna enjoy it. All right, there’s that. Now on top of that, we’re gonna sprinkle the rest of the pineapple, just like that. Okay. And then from the pineapple, the rest of the cherry pie filling Here we go. Sure we get it all out. Spread it around, quickly like that. Okay. Now we’re gonna do the last but not least. One more cool whip. Look how beautiful that is. Isn’t it color gorgeous on the side? I love that because you want, as I always tell you, you eat this with your eyes. Wish I get this top off. Here we go. Okay. Now we do cool whip. I’m sure that I’m kind of rushing so I can get to the other things we have to make. But I’m sure that you’ll take your time and effort to do this a little more easily. All across here, like that. Okay. And we’ll do the pecans on top like that and sprinkle them all over the top. Then we have the cherries with the stems that we’ll decorate the top of that with. I think you get the idea. We’re gonna put this in and let it chill. Like I said, you can do it the day before. The next one I wanna show you, we’ve been doing our Brussels sprouts and we have roasted them and they are beautifully roasted for about a half an hour with just some butter on them. Now they’re gonna go back into the oven and I’m just gonna pour some cream because what’s gonna happen now, the cream will make a sauce and we’re gonna cook them for about another 5, 6, 7 minutes with this cream on it. This is heavy cream. Gonna put them back in the oven. While I do that we’re gonna take a break, we’ll be back with a whole lot more. We have prepared our roast beef, never fail roast beef dinner and let me show you how quick and easy it was to do this. First of all, you’re gonna take the nice big rump roast, put in a nice big roasting pan that will accommodate vegetables around it. It’s really important. Now we take one envelope of dry onion mix, soup mix and you’re gonna just pat that all over the surface of that roast as much as you can get for it to stick because the roast is moist, so it should stick to that pretty good. Then we take one can of soup, that would be the cream of mushroom soup. And we’re just going to put that all on top of the onion soup because, put the onion soup against the meat first because that’s what’s gonna flavor the meat and then just spread it all over, just spread it all over the surface of a completely ’cause that’s what’s gonna cook down and make your gravy. It’s gonna be nice and moist, delicious. The aroma is incredible when that’s baking ’cause you’re gonna put this in a preheated 350 degree oven and it will bake about three hours. What’s nice about this, you can prepare it all, put it in the oven, forget it and spend time with your family on Christmas day instead of running in and out, having to prepare a lot of stuff and watching a roast beef. So the time that you do this is well worth it and what you get for the finished product is great. Now once we have that totally covered, every little bit out of that can come on, somebody’s bite, now we’re gonna add our vegetables. And of course we have to do potatoes. Hey, you get back over here you. One tried to get away. Ah, there you go. Now, wow, we’re gonna put the white potatoes all at the end. You can put carrots, you can put any kind of vegetables that you really, really enjoy. I’m using the white potatoes and no carrots because my salad’s gonna have carrots in it. And I didn’t wanna duplicate that. So I’m putting sweet potatoes or yams and they’re sliced. Now we’re just gonna put them all along the other edge of the pan. Notice it’s a deep pan that’s going to accommodate it. And you’ll notice we do not add any water, it’s just the vegetables. So we have the meat and we have the white potatoes, cut them kind of uniformly about the same size so they all cook evenly. And then after they all get in there, nice and evenly formed, we have one more vegetable that we kind of want to put on there and that would be just a few sliced fresh mushrooms. Just sprinkle… See they’re all trying to escape. They don’t wanna get in, get in there. Okay now we have them. All the mushrooms are in the pan and the next thing, you don’t season it, you don’t do anything, but put the cover on and place it in that preheated oven for just three hours. You don’t even have to look at it. You don’t have to do anything except open that baby, put it in there and let it go. Now, when you are done, let me show you what you have. Is that awesome? Doesn’t that look great? That’s our roast beef. Look, you can see the wonderful gravy, it’s all down in there. Potatoes are beautifully done. The white potatoes. That’s going to be our main dish for our dinner. Isn’t that great? I love this. And you set it out like this so that the juices will all kind of come back and hold in so that when you cut it, you’re not losing all the juices. So you’re bringing out about 20 minutes before you really wanna serve it. Keep the lid on tight. Keep it in my grandma’s pan there. Okay. Now, if you’re looking for a different kind of a salad, we decided we would do a carrot ambrosia salad. Shredded carrots is about a pound, pound of shredded carrots. We’re gonna add some, eh, about three, four. So a cup of golden raisins. When I was a kid and grandma would make us the nut rolls, she’d make them, she put golden raisins in them, I thought that was so exciting. Grandma’s using golden raisins. I thought they were some exotic thing. I didn’t know they came in the regular or the golden. What do I know? Then we add some pineapple crushed pineapple. Paul and I really like pineapple, so that’s why I use it a lot. And some flaked coconut. This is nicely shredded or flaked coconut. And then what sweetens this is just a couple of tablespoons of honey. That’s all it is. The sweetness of everything else that’s in this comes to the fore and really it’s called ambrosia. Carrot ambrosia. It’s a delicious salad and you wanna keep it nice and cold until you’re ready to serve it. What I would suggest is when you serve it put it on a nice lettuce lined dish. And when you do that, it will help to bring the greens and the oranges out, it’ll look really pretty. Okay. But you wanna keep it cold. Okay. Let me move on. So we don’t run out of time. Next I wanna take a little peek at my… Let’s take a look at those wonderful little… Ah! I think we’ll let them go just a few minutes more. That sauce is gonna… It’s gonna form into a sauce the cream that I’ve put on them, but it’s not there just yet. Then we’re gonna put a topping and the topping that’s gonna go on that is some gruyere cheese, some fresh breadcrumbs and some melted butter which no longer seems to be melted. Okay. So here we go. Now we’re gonna mix that together and then we’re just gonna sprinkle that on the top of the Brussels. And from that, we’re gonna put them under the boiler just for a few minutes. So I just want to walk you through that in case we don’t have the time to do it. Last, but not least, in every English home when you have a, when you have any kind of a Christmas dinner with roast beef Brussels it cries Yorkshire pudding. So that’s what I’m gonna do for you. But I’m gonna make an individual one. Okay. These are little individual ones. We have one cup of flour. Try to have all of your ingredients at room temperature, okay? And we’re gonna take two eggs, one cup of milk and just a little pinch of salt, about a fourth of a teaspoon. And let’s see. What we have to do with this butter. If you wanna put a teaspoon, about a teaspoon of butter in each of the cups, because in the old days when they first started this, they would take their roast, they did it on an open fireplace and the drippings would fall down on a pudding which was made just what we’re making now and that beef would flavor that’s so tastes like meat and they’d give that to the kids. That’s what they call Yorkshire pudding. Well, got to that, they enjoyed it so much, they love the taste of that that they started giving the kids the meat and they were eating the pudding. So this is, if you have drippings from your meat if you made a different kind of a beef, we don’t from this one because our drippings made into a gravy but if you did, you would put a couple of teaspoons, so of your drippings, the beef drippings into each cup and then that’s what you would use. If you don’t have that, you can use butter, okay? So we’re gonna do this and it’s gonna be a thin batter. And I’m gonna pour that in there. And these are gonna bake at 425 for about 18 minutes. I’m gonna put them in, and when we come back, we’re gonna be in the dining room with our wonderful Christmas dinner prepared just for you. We’ll be back in just a minute. Well, we’re in the dining room finally and everything is prepared. And now it’s just time to relax with the family. It’s Christmas dinner and my wonderful husband, Paul’s here with me today. I’m so glad he could be here too. And let me take you on the journey around the table. We’re gonna start with our punch bowl cake. Isn’t this beautiful? We just kind of put it, we didn’t wanna put it on the table so we put it on a little small little table and just put it with a wreath around it. How beautiful we could do it with a punch bowl if you were having punch too. Next we have our gratin, these are the Brussels sprouts and they have a lovely gravy on them, like a sauce and then we put their gruyere cheese on, oh, delicious. Down there is our roast beef. Look at that perfect never fail roast beef dinner. Tender as can be. Right next to it are our Yorkshire puddings. Aren’t they beautiful? And they puff up. They are so lovely. What a great accompaniment. You wanna serve one of those, you can do it in a big bowl or each individual ones like I’ve done in the muffin cups today. Coming right around the table, there are the white potatoes that we used around our roast beef. And also we have our sweet potatoes that we’ve done around the roast beef too. These are done too perfection. Beautiful, nice and tender. These are some of Paul’s favorites, I know. And then our carrot salad we’ve added a few extra golden raisins on the top just to decorate it. We browned off some rolls and on every Christmas dinner table, we always include a birthday cake for Jesus because it’s his birthday. You have children, you have grandchildren, nieces, nephews at your dinner table, make sure that you do that. That’s a wonderful way to keep Christ the focus of your Christmas. We put a candle in there, we sing happy birthday Jesus and then we enjoy. That’s what it’s really all about. This is fun to do. This is a great time for fellowship and fun and family and friends, good food. But really the reason that we celebrate is the birth of Jesus Christ, my savior and my king. The greatest gift that you could give this holiday season would be to give yourself to the Lord. And all you do is just invite him to come in. He always comes in where he’s invited. He will never say, oh no, I don’t wanna go there. He comes if you open your arms and you invite him to come in. Would you consider that even today on Christmas day or this week so much bustling going on, our phone lines here at Cornerstone television are available for you to call and ask someone to pray with you, to receive Jesus Christ as your savior. I hope you’ve enjoyed our program today. Paul and I, and all the folks here At Home we say Merry Christmas to you and yours, and be sure to join us the next time, because it’s never the same when you’re not with us right here At Home. Merry Christmas and a blessed, happy new year.
- [Narrator] Furnishing’s provided by Levin furniture, featuring Lane’s Country Living collection. Food provided by Jordan Banana Company, wholesalers of fresh food and vegetables, in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania
- [Announcer] Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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