How to cook the perfect Christmas dinner

Felicity's turkey. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Turkey and gravy

Thanks to a national fondness for tradition, turkey remains the centrepiece of most festive celebrations in this country, despite its reputation for tinder-dry blandness. A good bird does have several things going for it, apart from its immense size, however – matchless trimmings being the principle attraction as far as I'm concerned. But how on earth do you achieve that elusive combination of juicy meat and crisp savoury skin to make it worthy of those pigs in blankets?

Delia Smith claims to come from "a long line of turkey cooks", so I'm happy to put bird number one on her capable hands. Her apparently foolproof method involves basting the bird generously with melted butter, seasoning it, topping with streaky bacon and then wrapping it festively in foil, while leaving enough room for the air to circulate during cooking. My efforts look more like a Chinese takeaway swan that's been heavily sat upon than the "neat parcel" described, but it's what's inside that counts. After an initial 40 minute blast at 220C, the turkey cooks quietly at 170C for a couple of hours, before I remove the foil and turn the heat back up so it can tan for the final half hour. The meat is indeed juicy – I can see why Delia's fortunate family enjoy it right "down to the jelly and dripping" – but the skin, while tasty, falls short on the crispness front.

Looks weird, but great result - turkey under buttered muslin. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

The following day, as luck has it, I'm invited to eat an early Christmas dinner at Leiths Cookery School – who have somehow managed to produce a skin so crisp that it's served on a separate plate, rather like crackling. Their secret weapon, I discover, is a square of fine cotton rejoicing in the glorious name "butter muslin", available at most kitchen shops. I soak the material in a bowl of melted butter, season the turkey, then drape the muslin reverentially over it and pop it in the oven at 180C for three hours. So easy it almost seems to be good to be true – but it's fabulous: a crunchy cinnamon tan skin, and moist meat beneath.

I can never resist messing with perfection, however, so when I hear an American friend mention brining a turkey for Thanksgiving, I can hardly wait for them to finish their story before I ask for a recipe. They kindly point me in the direction of the excellent Cooks Illustrated magazine, which furnishes a recipe - and what a recipe.

I wash out the mop bucket, dissolve 350g table salt in 7 litres of water, and plop the turkey in it. It bobs about rather gruesomely, so I stick the bucket outside and hope it's too cold for foxes to venture out. Five hours later, I fish the bird out, rinse it and tenderly pat it dry, then stick it in the fridge for 8 hours to dry out. It's beginning to dawn on me that this is in no way a quick recipe.

Leiths recipe roast turkey. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

The next morning, I put the troublesome turkey breast-side down on a roasting rack lined with foil, brush it all over with butter, and put it in a 200C oven for 45 minutes. Reading to the end of the recipe, I realise the worst is yet to come: I must rotate the turkey three times over the next hour – and balancing a hot, buttery 4.5kg bird on one stunted wing is even less easy than it sounds, believe me. Is it worth it? The skin is crisp, although not as crisp as the Leiths bird, and I realise rather belatedly that brined meat tastes like – brined meat. Not Christmas turkey.

Once you've invested in some muslin, the easiest way to roast a turkey is, fortunately, also the best. Forget spinning it during cooking, or brining it, or embalming it in foil – this is absolutely foolproof. Gravy should be kept similarly simple. As turkeys tend towards leanness, it's a good idea to add some water to the roasting tin before cooking to help things along – otherwise, I found, there tended to be a lot of grease, and not much in the way of meat juices to play around with. Making a giblet stock, a la Delia, felt like an unnecessary extravagance of effort with so much else to think about – instead, add them (apart from the liver, which will make your gravy bitter) to the roasting tin before cooking, along with the neck, half an onion, and a bay leaf for flavouring. This should give you a well-flavoured base for your gravy, which you can top up later with chicken stock or water as required.

Felicity's perfect gravy. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

To make a gravy worthy of the occasion, I tried adding cranberry sauce and port, as suggested by Good Food magazine, but they overpowered the delicate flavour of the turkey. Instead, take a leaf out of turkey queen Martha Stewart's book, and slip in a generous slug of Madeira – its rich, honeyed flavour works brilliantly, and you can drink the rest of the bottle with some Christmas cake the next day.

1 turkey, with giblets
170g butter
½ an onion
Bay leaf
1 large piece of cook's muslin

For the gravy:
1 tbsp plain flour
4 tbsp Madeira
568ml hot poultry stock or water

1. Take the turkey out of the fridge a couple of hours before cooking. Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Weigh the turkey, and calculate the cooking time: 20 minutes per 450g, plus an extra 20 minutes.

2. Melt the butter in a large bowl, and soak the muslin in it; it should all be absorbed. Season the turkey liberally with salt and pepper, and put it in a large roasting tin with the turkey neck, giblets (except the liver) onion, bay leaf and 300ml water. Cover the turkey completely with the folded muslin and put it into the hot oven.

3. Check the turkey is cooked by piercing the thickest part of the thigh with a skewer – the juices should run clear. Remove the muslin, take out of the tin and put in a warm place to rest for at least 30 minutes before carving.

4. Pour the juices and fat from the roasting tin into a gravy separator, or skim off as much as the fat as possible from the top and discard. Mix the flour to a smooth paste with 2 tbsp of the meat juices, and pour the rest of the juices back into the tin on a medium heat, stirring to dislodge any bits on the bottom. Stir in the flour paste, the Madeira, and a ladleful of stock, mix well, and then add the rest of the stock. Bring to a simmer, and cook, stirring, until it has reached your desired thickness. Season to taste and serve with the turkey.

Sage and onion stuffing

Felicity's perfect Christmas stuffing. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Stuffing is one of the main reasons I can never quite bring myself to step away from poultry at Christmas time. I quite like playing around with different flavours (chestnut and prune, or apricot and ginger), and have long had Jane Grigson's oyster stuffing on my to-do list, but sage and onion is the undisputed classic. Traditionally, it would have been made with bread, which was both cheap and had the virtue of soaking up all of those delicious meat juices – something I've always feared would detract from my gravy. Sausagemeat, however, tastes pretty good already, which is not something that can always be said about soggy bread.

Clockwise from left: Leiths sage and onion stuffing, Delia sausagemeat stuffing and Delia's stuffing with added egg. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

However, in the interests of giving tradition a fair trial, I make two stuffings, one with a breadcrumb and apple base, as used by Leiths, and one with sausagemeat, as recommended by Delia. Leiths soften the onion in butter first, Delia uses it raw – but then she also calls for dried sage, so I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope for the best. I have to admit that I prefer the sausagemeat version – it's firm and crisp, rather than stodgy – but the lemon zest, and sweeter onion of the Leiths recipe are worth borrowing. I'm with Delia on the fact that a beaten egg makes the finished stuffing too firm, though – like her, I prefer it slightly crumbly.

I also try adding some chopped turkey liver, as recommended by Delia in another recipe, but find the offaly flavour rather strident; nutmeg, however, adds a gentle hint of festive spice. To lighten the texture slightly, I've increased the ratio of breadcrumbs to sausagemeat, and, taking a tip from delicious magazine, toasted half the breadcrumbs first, to provide a hint of crunch. Feel free to tinker with the flavourings as you wish, but I would urge you to make the full amount – cold stuffing is even better the next day.

Makes about 14 balls

Knob of butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
75g white breadcrumbs
Small bunch of sage leaves, finely chopped
Grated zest of ½ lemon
450g pork sausagemeat
Nutmeg, to grate

1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over a gentle heat, and soften the onion. Turn the heat up to medium, and add half the breadcrumbs. Fry until golden.

2. Mix the onion and toasted breadcrumbs with the rest of the crumbs, the sage and lemon zest, then add the sausagemeat and mix well with your hands. Season and grate over a little nutmeg and mix again.

3. Form into walnut-sized balls, put into a greased baking dish, and bake for half an hour at 200C while the turkey is resting.

Cranberry sauce

Felicity's perfect cranberry sauce. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Cranberry sauce is ridiculously easy to make, and, because you can make it ahead of time and keep it on display, suggests you're a bona fide domestic deity, when in fact all you've done is chucked a few ingredients into a pan. Well, unless you make Delia's cranberry and orange relish, of course, which calls for the fruit to be finely minced before cooking. Chopping up fresh cranberries is not a job I'd wish on anyone – they're slippery little buggers, and I'm red of face as well as hand by the time I've finished. Cranberries, as most other recipes acknowledge, handily break down of their own accord when heated, giving a more interestingly varied texture than the laboriously minced versions.

Nigella's redder than red cranberry sauce. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

I like the orange juice in Delia's sauce, although I find the level of peel rather overpowering – a sprinkling, as suggested by Leiths, is preferable. The port she uses gives a much richer flavour than the cherry brandy in Nigella's redder than red version, which I find rather sickly. The ground ginger, cloves and cinnamon in Delia's recipe detract from the clear, sharp flavour of the fruit though: this Christmas recipe needs no festive spice to make it special.

Serves 8

Leiths recipe cranberry sauce. Photograph: Felicity Cloake

Juice of 1 orange, plus zest of ½ orange
210g caster sugar
450g fresh cranberries
2 tbsp port

1. Put the orange juice and sugar into a small pan, and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Add the cranberries, and bring to a simmer, then cook until most of the cranberries have burst, and you have a loose cranberry sauce. It will continue to set as it cools, so stop cooking when it still seems a little too liquid.

2. Stir in the port and orange zest, and serve, or put into sterilised jars.

Bread sauce

Felicity's perfect bread sauce. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

I could eat bread sauce by the spoonful – so comfortingly bland and creamy to begin, with a just a kick of spice to remind you of its medieval roots. It's not a dish that bears much mucking around with; the most important thing to remember is to give the clove-studded onion time to gently flavour the milk base of the sauce. Jane Grigson suggests bringing it very slowly to a simmer in a bain marie, but it's easier to do it in a small pan over a very low heat, and then set it aside to infuse, as Delia suggests.

Delia, Jane Grigson and clotted cream bread sauce (l-r). Photograph: Felicity Cloake

It's perfectly palatable with just milk, but to really push the boat out, stir in a little of the clotted cream you can also use for your brandy butter – it doesn't water down the sauce as much as the double cream more normally used for the purpose, and it gives a less greasy finish than butter. Both Grigson and Mrs Beeton top their sauces with cayenne pepper, which makes them look pleasingly festive – if you don't fancy that, you can always add spice with white pepper instead.

Serves 6-8

1 small onion
5 cloves
A bay leaf
500ml whole milk
115g white breadcrumbs
1 tbsp clotted cream (optional)
Nutmeg, to grate
Cayenne pepper, to serve

1. Cut the onion in half, and stud with the cloves. Put into a small pan with the bay leaf and the milk, and bring very gently to a simmer. Turn off the heat and leave to infuse for at least half an hour, but longer if possible.

2. Remove the onion, cloves and bay leaf, and gently heat the milk. Whisk in the breadcrumbs and heat, stirring, until you have your preferred texture. Stir in cream, if using. Season with salt and white pepper, and grate in nutmeg to taste. Serve warm.