Your Christmas meat order, planned week by week

Christmas dinner is won or lost long before anybody puts a pan on the hob. The cooking is the easy part. The hard part is deciding what you want, knowing how much of it to buy, and getting it home in good time so that the last two days before Christmas belong to you rather than to a car park. What follows is the countdown we work to in the shop, week by week, with the dates we need from you and the reasons behind them.

Late November: decide what is going in the middle of the table

This is the thinking week. No need to ring anybody yet, but by the end of the month you want a decision. Beef or bird, on the bone or rolled, one big joint or two smaller ones. Count the heads properly, including the ones who say they are not eating much and then eat a great deal.

If beef is the answer, this is the moment to consider a rib. A dry-aged forerib is the joint we sell most of at Christmas and for good reason: the bone conducts heat gently, the fat bastes the meat as it goes, and a long dry-age concentrates the flavour into something you cannot rush or fake. Traditional breeds reared slowly out on grass and clover give beef with proper marbling and a deep, mineral flavour, and hanging is what turns that into something worth carrying to the table. If carving frightens you, a rolled forerib gives you the same eating with none of the anxiety.

How much to buy ( weights are for raw meat, not cooked)

• Beef on the bone: 400g per person.
• Boned and rolled beef: 250g to 300g per person.
• Turkey: 500g per person on the bone, and buy a size up if you want cold cuts on Boxing Day.
• Goose: 700g per person. There is less meat on a goose than its size suggests.

Always err upward. Nobody has ever regretted leftovers at Christmas.

First week of December: place the order

Orders can be placed from the beginning of November but the first ten days of December are when the bulk of them land. We ask for all Christmas orders to be with us by 15th December. After that we take what we can, but by then the big ribs and the larger birds are largely spoken for, and we would rather say yes to you than sorry.

When you order, in person or on the telephone, have these ready:

1. How many people you are feeding, and whether anybody is coming for Boxing Day too.
2. The joint you want and the rough weight, or simply tell us the numbers and let us advise.
3. Whether you want it on the bone, chined and tied, or boned and rolled.
4. The day you want to collect it or which day you’d like delivery
5. Address
6. Email
7. A mobile number we can actually reach you on during the week of Christmas.

Tell us then about anything unusual – a fillet for a small household, a joint for eighteen, a beef order that needs to fit a particular oven. Late requests are far harder to meet than early ones.

Mid December: the supporting cast

By the middle of the month the main joint is settled, so turn your attention to everything around it. This is the part people leave to Christmas Eve and then regret.

Get your fat in early. Roast potatoes are the dish most fought over and the one most often let down, and the difference between good and unforgettable is what you cook them in. Goose fat gives that classic crisp shell and a clean flavour; beef dripping gives something richer and more savoury that stands up beautifully alongside a rib of beef. Both keep happily in the fridge for weeks, so buy them now.

Gravy is the other one. Order beef bones in good time, roast them hard with onion and carrot, and make your stock in the third week of December while the kitchen is still calm. It freezes, and on the day you will be very glad of it. If time has already run away with you, a concentrated beef stock in the cupboard is honest insurance.

Add the small things to the same order: bread sauce, sea salt, stuffing, anything for the cheese board. Getting them in one collection saves you a second trip in the worst week of the year for traffic.

Of course, all of the above can be ordered at the same time as your bird and joint either online or in person

The week of Christmas: collection

Collections run from 19th December. The 22nd and 23rd are our busiest days by a distance, and Christmas Eve is busier still until we close at midday at the Farm. Our Borough Market stall is open until 3pm. Final opening hours for the week go up in the shop and online in early December.

Our honest advice: collect on the 22nd or the 23rd rather than Christmas Eve. Your meat is better for a day or two settling in the fridge than for an hour in a hot boot, and you will get through the shop in a fraction of the time. Bring a cool bag if you have a drive ahead of you, and bring the name the order was placed under, or ideally your order confirmation.

Christmas Eve: the day before

Take the joint out of the fridge tonight only if your kitchen is genuinely cool – otherwise first thing in the morning is soon enough. |Remove any packaging. Meat wants to come up towards room temperature before it goes anywhere near an oven, and a large rib needs two to three hours out to do just that.

Then do the jobs that steal your morning: peel the potatoes and leave them in cold water, make the bread sauce, prepare the sprouts, get the stock out of the freezer, lay the table. Check the shelf your joint has to sit on will actually take the tin.

Christmas Day: the timings

Work backwards from when you want to sit down, and build the rest around the resting time rather than treating it as an afterthought. Remember also that bigger joints like forerib, ham and even poultry can happily rest for 1hr+ on a board, covered in foil and a couple of tea towels so your timings dont need to be perfect down to the minute!

• Three hours before: joint out of the fridge, oven on later.
• Roast at 220C for 20 minutes to get the colour, then drop to 180C.
• For rare, allow 15 minutes per 500g at the lower temperature. For medium-rare, 18 to 20 minutes. Use a thermometer if you have one: 48C to 50C in the middle for rare, 55C for medium-rare, pulled out and rising as it rests.
• Rest for a minimum of 30 minutes and up to an hour, loosely tented with foil. A rested joint stays hot far longer than people expect, and this is when the potatoes go up to 220C to finish.
• Make the gravy in the roasting tin while the beef rests. Scrape everything up, add the stock, reduce, taste.

Carve at the last moment, across the grain, onto a warm plate.

Boxing Day and after

Leftover rib, sliced cold and thick, is one of the best things about Christmas. Keep the bones for stock. And if you are feeding people again on the 27th, a brisket put in low and slow that morning asks almost nothing of you and rewards you handsomely, which by then is exactly what you want.