A Christmas Picnic: What Actually Travels to the Beach

By Vicki Richards, National Customer Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

A Christmas picnic works best when most of the food never needed a fridge. Build the base from pita, crackers, olives, a jar of pesto and a tin of good tuna, then add cheese, prawns and cut fruit from the esky at the last minute.

A picnic Christmas takes the oven out of the problem and puts sand, ants and the slow warm-up of a car boot in its place. That changes what is worth buying. The food that travels is the food that was already sitting in a cupboard: pita, crackers, olives, jars, tins and biscuits, which is most of what we group under festive entertaining essentials. The cold half of the day is small, and it is the only part an esky has to carry.

Buy the half that was never cold

Sort the shopping into two piles before you buy anything. Pile one is shelf stable and can be ordered in October. Pile two is cold, gets bought in the last two days, and is the only part you fuss over on the morning. Most picnic stress comes from letting pile two grow.

Pile one does more work than people expect. Artisan pita is baked flat and dry, so it arrives in the shape it left in and holds a load without snapping, which fresh bread sweating in a bag will not. A jar of Mediterranean olives is the opener, the palate cleanser and the thing everyone picks at while the rug is straightened. Neither needs ice, a plate or a serving spoon.

Pile two is cheese, prawns, cold chicken and cut fruit, from your deli, fish shop and greengrocer. We sell none of that, which is worth knowing when you plan around us: our half is the half you can order months out and forget until Christmas Eve.

A Christmas picnic menu that survives the drive

Five parts, in the order you would unpack them. Everything above the last section goes in the bag the night before.

Those four cupboard items, the pita, the olives, the pesto and the tuna, come to a little under $35 and feed two people properly with nothing to wash up. Add the crackers and the shortbread and it stretches to four.

What does not travel

Four things reliably ruin a summer picnic, and all four are avoidable at the shopping stage.

• Chocolate. Anything moulded or coated turns into a bag of sadness in a warm car. Swap it for shortbread, biscuits and dried fruit.
• Mayonnaise and cream. Potato salad and cream desserts are fine at a table with a fridge nearby, and a liability on a rug in the sun.
• Very soft cheese. A ripe brie will find its own level and run off the board. Firmer cheese, cubed at home, behaves.
• Glass. Not a food problem, a barefoot problem. Decant into acrylic or stainless steel before you leave.

Be strict about one thing. Cold food that has sat out in the heat does not go back into the esky for later, and cooked prawns are the least forgiving item on the rug. Pack what you will actually eat.

If nothing is going in an oven at all this year, we set out a complete bought table, part by part, in Christmas food without cooking.

The box, the bag and the ants

Two containers do most of the work. A sealed stainless steel lunch box takes the cut fruit and the cheese, stacks flat in the esky and cannot be chewed open by anything with six legs. Everything dry rides above it in a tote, so the crackers are not sitting under a block of ice.

Leave the good glasses at home. A few acrylic tumblers weigh almost nothing and mean nobody is picking glass out of the grass at dusk. If you are taking wine or beer, decant or stick to cans, and enjoy responsibly.

Ants are the part nobody plans for. They find sugar first, so sweet things stay in their tube until they are eaten, and rubbish goes into a sealed bag rather than a corner of the rug. A tea towel over the open food between servings saves an afternoon.

Questions we get asked

What food is good for a Christmas picnic?

Food that is already stable at room temperature: pita and crackers, olives, a jar of pesto or tapenade, tinned fish, nuts, hard cheese, shortbread and fruit that needs no cutting. Add one properly chilled item, usually prawns or cold chicken, and you have a full meal with almost nothing on ice.

How do I keep picnic food cold at the beach?

Chill the esky and its contents overnight rather than asking ice to do the cooling on the day, then pack it full, because a full esky holds temperature far better than a half empty one. Keep it in shade under a towel, and open it as rarely as you can. Drinks belong in a second esky.

What Christmas picnic food will not melt?

Shortbread, biscuits, dried fruit and fruit paste, nuts, crackers and anything sitting in oil or brine. Chocolate, soft cheese, cream desserts and ice cream are the ones to leave at home. A tube or tin of biscuits also stops the contents being crushed, which a soft packet will not.

What should I pack for Christmas Day at the park?

A rug and a spare tea towel, two eskies, unbreakable cups, a serving board, a small sharp knife, a tin opener, a bin bag and hand sanitiser. For the food, use the two pile rule: shelf stable goes in a tote the night before, cold goes on ice as you leave.

Order the cupboard half now

The pita, crackers, olives, jars and biscuits keep until Christmas, so there is no reason to buy them in the December rush with everybody else. Put the cupboard list together from festive entertaining essentials in one order, with free Australia-wide shipping over $100. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post.

If the picnic is also where presents get handed over, our Christmas hampers hold much the same food, ready to open on the rug. The same rule runs through the season: cupboard half early, cold half late. We set that out in our guide to Christmas food in Australia.