Christmas Food Ideas for People Who Are Not Cooking

By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

You can put a full Christmas table together without turning anything on. Buy it in five parts: something salty to open, a cheese board, one cold protein, a filled pastry case, and a dessert that comes out of a jar. Order it in November, plate it in twenty minutes on the day, and nothing needs an oven.

Not cooking at Christmas is a plan, not a failure of nerve. Plenty of Australian households spend the day at the beach, in a rental with one small oven, or at somebody else's place, and the food still has to be good. Everything below comes from our gourmet food range, arrives sealed and keeps, so the effort happens in November and the 25th is assembly.

Nobody is checking whether you cooked

Most Christmas food writing quietly assumes an oven, a spare Tuesday and a household that enjoys a project. A lot of what makes a Christmas table good never goes near heat: olives, crackers, cured fish, cheese, nuts, chocolate. Choosing that half well is a skill, not a shortcut.

Be honest about what a bought table is and it works. Pretend otherwise and you end up apologising for food that was fine. The version that holds up is good produce, opened, arranged and served at the right temperature.

One thing to be clear about before you plan around us: we do not sell the ham, the turkey, the prawns or the cheese. Those come from a butcher, a fish shop or the supermarket, and they are the easiest part of the day to buy, because somebody else has already cooked or cured them. What we sell is everything that goes around them: olives, crackers, relishes, pastes, pastry cases, nuts, biscuits and chocolate. Which is, conveniently, the part of the table that never needed cooking.

Five parts of a table with nothing switched on

Build in this order and the table fills out without a single hot dish. Prices are what is on the shelf now.

1. Something salty, opened first. Olives in a bowl, and it can genuinely be that simple. Kangaroo Island smoked kalamata olives are $8.95 for a 185g jar, smoked in South Australia, rounder and less sharp than a plain kalamata. Drain them, tip them into a small bowl, put an empty saucer beside it for the pits. For a bigger crowd, add nuts or crisps from the snacking shelf.

2. A cheese board that is mostly not cheese. Buy the cheese wherever you normally do; what makes a board look considered is what surrounds it. VPC Valley Seed Crisps in quince and almond are $6.95 for 150g and do two jobs at once, since the sweetness that usually arrives as a spoon of paste is already baked into the crisp. Two cheeses and one of these is already a board. Four cheeses and three accompaniments is a board people photograph.

3. One thing to spread. Belazu black olive tapenade, $12.95 for 170g, is tree ripened Beldi olives crushed with capers, garlic and semi dried tomato. Spoon it into a small dish with the oil left sitting on top, put a knife beside it, walk away. It is also the thing that rescues cold meat on Boxing Day, so buy it expecting to use it twice.

4. A pastry case that arrives already baked. This is the trick that reads as cooking. Our pastry shells come out of the box ready to fill, from $9.95: Confiletas mini savoury rounds at roughly 37mm across, twelve to a pack, or the larger vol au vent shells at roughly 75mm, six to a pack. Fill them cold with smoked salmon and crème fraîche, prawns with lemon and mayonnaise, or whipped feta and a smear of the tapenade above. Fill them within an hour of serving: wet fillings soften the base, and a soggy shell is worse than no shell.

5. Dessert out of a jar. Borgo caramel sauce, $21.95 for 220g, is cooked down slowly to an Italian recipe. Poured over good vanilla ice cream with shortbread crumbled on top, it beats most things that came out of an oven that morning. We do not sell pudding or fruit cake, and in an Australian December the cold dessert is the one people finish.

Making bought food look like a table you meant

Three habits do most of the work. Decant selectively: olives, nuts and anything in brine look better in a bowl, while a good jar with a proper label can stay as it is, because the label is part of why you bought it. Take everything except the cold protein out of the fridge half an hour early, since fridge cold flattens flavour and is the most common reason a bought spread tastes like less than it cost. And serve in waves, not one course: olives and crisps early, the board when people sit, pastry cases when the ham comes out, dessert late. Spread over three hours, the same shopping list feels like a day of food.

When to order, and roughly how much

Sealed food is the one part of Christmas catering you can finish in early November and forget about, and early is when the range is still complete: orders ramp up fast from late November, and the flavours people actually want sell through first. Free shipping across Australia applies on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our packing room in Corio, Victoria. We do not offer same day delivery. Australia Post confirms its Christmas dates in October, so treat mid December as the practical limit rather than a deadline to aim at.

On quantity, the rule for a no cook table is more small things and fewer large ones, and almost everybody under buys crackers. Our guide to how much food to allow per person at Christmas has the numbers by course, and what Australians actually eat at Christmas covers the shape of the whole day if you are hosting for the first time.

If you would rather make one decision instead of ten, the Gourmet Snack Box Hamper at $99.95 is most of this list in one box, hand packed here in Corio. Add a packet of crackers and the order clears $100 for free shipping.

Common questions

What Christmas food can I buy ready made?

Almost everything except the centrepiece. Olives, tapenade, chutneys and relishes, crackers and seed crisps, fruit pastes, roasted nuts, baked pastry cases, shortbread, chocolate and dessert sauces all arrive ready to serve. Cooked ham, cured salmon and cooked prawns are ready made too, they just come from a butcher or fish shop rather than from us.

Can you buy a whole Christmas spread online?

The accompaniments, yes, in one order. We ship jars, crackers, nuts, biscuits, confectionery and hampers Australia wide, free over $100. The fresh centrepiece is the exception: we do not stock ham, turkey, seafood or cheese, so plan on one local shop the week before and one online order in early November.

What is the easiest Christmas meal to put together?

A cold table. Cold meat or seafood, a board, two or three salads, and dessert from a jar, with nothing needing an oven or timing. If you want one hot dish without a day of cooking, the gourmet meals shelf has a paella kit that feeds four from a single pan.

When you are ready to shop it, start with the gourmet food range and work down the five parts above, or browse the Christmas range to see the festive lines in one place. Order in November and the day itself is a bowl, a board and a spoon.