How Miele can help take the stress out of Christmas dinner

We all know how it goes…

In the weeks leading up to Christmas Day you visualise the perfect Christmas lunch. A delicious smell drifts in from the kitchen as you sit back to sip at a glass of prosecco, content in the knowledge that the meal is very much under control.

Five minutes before it’s served you saunter through to the kitchen and dish up the fabulous feast. Calling to your family they all gather around the immaculately decorated table and you bring in the roast. Cue gasps of pleasure as the perfectly cooked meat melts in their mouths and the immaculately behaved children even ask for seconds of Brussels sprouts.

The reality?

You spend the entire morning anxiously checking the roast, juggling oven space, constantly cleaning worktops that seem to become dirty all by themselves and wondering why you’re making bread sauce yet again when you know that no one will eat it.

Then it’s time to serve, which of course you have to do while dodging the kids who are chasing the dog around the kitchen with their new dinosaur toy, while your husband complains that the wine hasn’t had time to breathe and, whoops, you forgot to make the gravy. There’s a 20 minute lag between the first and last dish getting to the table, the kids refuse to eat anything except roast potatoes and WHO’S TAKEN MY WINE?!!

There is an answer!

With Miele appliances it’s like preparing Christmas dinner with a professional chef lending a helping hand.

We asked Jack Hone, our chief kitchen designer and a trained chef, for his advice on how to get the best out of Miele to take the stress out of Christmas dinner.

Cook up a feast with the Miele H6267BP Moisture Plus oven

Perfect turkey

In recent years there has been a resurgence in quality turkey for the Christmas table. Gone are the days when your only choice was a mass produced, intensively reared white turkey with meat that tasted of…well…nothing! Today many more farmers are returning to tastier breeds and they are rearing and hanging th    e birds in a more traditional way.

But poor cooking techniques can still mean that even the best turkey ends up dry and tasteless. The H6267BP will help you to roast it to perfection and, with its 76 litre capacity, it’s large enough to cope with the biggest bird.

It combines over 100 different cooking programmes with an integrated temperature probe, to ensure your turkey comes out of the oven at exactly the right point. And its Moisture Plus technology injects steam into the oven to keep the turkey beautifully moist. The same smart technology will also give you the perfect roast goose.

The oven shelves have fully telescopic runners meaning that it’s easy to pull out the meat to baste or add vegetables to roast in the tray. Or, if you’re roasting goose, it’s a convenient way to get to the tray to remove excess fat.

Beyond the roast

The steam injection will also give your roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings a light and golden crisp finish. And it’s fantastic for roasting off your turkey bones ready for your gravy, the extra moisture achieving a wonderful caramelisation on the bones, adding all important depth of flavour to your finished gravy.

And for those last minute panics it even has a rapid heat up option, so you can get it to the right temperature quickly to cook those pigs in blankets that you’ve just found at the back of the fridge!

Flexible cooking with the Miele DGC6600 steam combination oven

The steam-powered revolution

Steam combination ovens are increasingly popular thanks to their versatility. Whether you want a perfect crust on your bread, tender vegetables or a flavoursome joint, the combination of a traditional oven/grill with Miele’s MultiSteam technology can be hard to beat.

Learn to love Brussels sprouts

There’s an old joke that you should have your Brussels sprouts in to boil by July to have them ready in time for Christmas Day! While none of us would go this far, many still do boil this delicious and nutritious vegetable to within an inch of its life.

With the Miele DGC6600 you can discover just how tasty sprouts, and any veg, can really be. The capacious 48 litre oven allows you to cook three full trays, or six half trays, of vegetables. Simply pop them into the oven and use the ‘menu cooking’ option. The oven will pre-heat, tell you where to put everything and then steam cook your vegetables to perfection.

Even the kids might eat these sprouts…although we can’t offer a guarantee of this!

Moisture packed meat

But the Miele DGC6600 isn’t just about veg. It’s also perfect for steaming your turkey joint, stuffing and pigs in blankets. The integrated food probe and range of automatic cooking programmes will ensure that they all come out tender, moist and perfectly cooked for your festive feast.

“Oh, bring us some figgy pudding!”

Forget the stress of hob-top steaming your Christmas pudding or the nerve wracking hiss of the pressure cooker, the Miele DGC6600 will be busy steaming your pud to perfection while you and the family enjoy the main course. Brandy butter anyone?

There’s even an option for drying fruit, whether you want it for a healthy snack, to decorate the Christmas cake or even to hang on your front door wreath.

Take things slow (and scrumptious!) with the Miele ESW6229X warming drawer

Beautiful beef

We all know that warming drawers are handy for heating up crockery and keeping hot food table-ready, but at Christmas the Miele ESW6228X comes into its own if you fancy roast beef this year.

Affectionately nicknamed the “Sous Chef” by its creators, the 290mm warming drawer has a regulated fan for perfect slow cooking. Simply season and sear your beef joint then leave it to cook for a few hours and you’ll have a delicious roast.

The low, controlled temperature has a similar effect to water bathing, meaning that there’s very little shrinkage in the meat and both the flavours and moisture are deliciously retained.

Slowly does it

The same slow cooking principles can also produce a succulent smoked ham joint and moisture-rich stuffing. And, of course, it’s great for keeping dishes warm to ensure that everything reaches the table at the same time without the manic last minute rush.

Versatility and control thanks to the Miele KM6366-1 induction hob

Powerflex zones

The 806mm Miele KM6366-1 induction hob brings incredible flexibility to your Christmas Day cooking. With its six Powerflex cooking zones it can cope with pans of any size. Thanks to its pan size recognition system it just heats the pan, not the surrounding hob, using less energy and creating a handy safety feature. Each zone has its own temperature and time control, making it fully adaptable to each meal you cook.

Flexibility and flavour

For your Christmas Day cooking there’s ample space on the Miele KM6366-1 for pots and pans of all sizes. And it’ll easily cope with your roasting tin when you come to de-glaze it for that tasty gravy. The keep warm function will ensure that the bread sauce doesn’t overcook while you’re busy frying some bacon and chestnuts to toss in with the perfectly steamed Brussels sprouts.

The auto heat up function will get everything boiling as quickly as possible, while managing the power for you to prevent burning. And when everything’s ready the useful ‘Stop and Go’ function allows you to turn all the cooking zones down to power level 1 simultaneously.

Dealing with the aftermath

Once Christmas dinner is over the last thing you want to think about is cleaning up the mess. So, while you stack the dishwasher, Miele takes care of the rest of the cleaning.

The H6267BP Moisture Plus oven includes the Pyrolytic self-cleaning cycle which heats the oven up to around 480°C. At that temperature any food deposits are quickly reduced to a thin layer of ash which you can simply wipe away with a damp cloth.

The PerfectClean surface treatment available on the DGC660 steam combination oven ensures that any spilt food or fat slips off the surface for easy cleaning.

The outside of the Miele ovens and warming drawer are made using CleanSteel technology, meaning that you won’t be leaving any annoying fingerprints behind and won’t need any specialist cleaning products to keep it looking fabulous.

The ceramic glass surface of the Miele KM6366-1 hob is easy to clean and, thanks to the hob surface around the pan remaining relatively cool, you don’t get the burnt-on food deposits which can make cleaning so much more arduous.

Safe for little fingers

In the chaos of Christmas Day it isn’t always easy to keep an eye on the kids, but Miele helps you here too with a range of safety features.

The ovens and warming drawer all use the Miele Cool Front system, meaning that the front surfaces of the oven remain relatively cool, so there’s no chance of little fingers getting burned.

The Miele KM63366-1 induction hob comes with additional safety features, including an automatic switch off if the hob is turned on without a pan on it, a residual heat warning indicator and a safety cut off feature which detects extreme heat.

All the Miele appliances mentioned here also have a safety switch off, meaning that they are automatically turned off if not used for a period of time – perfect for when you’re rushing around on Christmas Day.

While these are helpful nothing replaces vigilance, so make sure that young children don’t have free range of the kitchen by themselves and ensure you take precautions such as always turning saucepan handles inwards.

Have a Merry Christmas!

If it sounds like Miele could make your Christmas a little easier, then come in to our showroom where the ESW6228X warming drawer is just one of the many Miele products available for you to try live. We’re also happy to share our advice on how to best use any of our appliances to ensure that Christmas Day is tasty and stress free!

If you’d like us to visit you to discuss the options for your kitchen then we’d be happy to do so. Please call us on 01959 53 22 33 to arrange an appointment.