New Year's Eve Grazing Without Cooking Another Christmas

By Dewi Salim, Hamper Building Lead at The Gourmet Pantry.

Put out five bowls on New Year's Eve and cook none of them: hand cooked chips, olives, mixed nuts, a seed crisp that works without cheese, and crackers with whatever jar is still open. Allow 250g a head, half out at nine and the rest after midnight.

This is the last food event of the year and the one nobody plans for. By the 31st the fridge is finished, the good shops are shut or picked over, and nobody wants to put another tray in the oven. What is left is the cupboard, and it is in better shape than you think. Everything below sits in our festive entertaining essentials range, arrives sealed and keeps for months.

What is still in the house on 31 December

Take stock first. The ham is down to the bone, the prawns went on the 25th, and the cheese is two rinds and a wedge of blue that has been open six days. The cupboard is the opposite: sealed crackers, an unopened canister of chips, a jar of olives, a bag of nuts, half a tapenade with the lid screwed back on. None of it has aged a day.

That points at something worth knowing when you place the December order. In our packing room, the lines still sitting on the shelf in January are always the same ones, the packets with the least Christmas printed on them. A bon bon is a 25 December item and nothing else. A canister of truffle chips is a 31 December item, a Tuesday night item and a taking it to someone's place item. Buy two or three things with no holly on the label.

This is not the Christmas grazing table, a long, hot, twenty person build that has to hold up for three hours in the middle of the day. New Year's Eve is later, smaller and darker. For two people on a balcony rather than ten around a bench, the grazing box for two is the format that fits.

For the cheese half of a board, at any time of year, our guide to cheese board ideas has the quantities and the cracker pairings.

Five bowls, and none of them need heat

Each bowl does one job. Leave one out and the board reads as thin.

1. The chips. Hunter's truffle chips at $12.95 for the 150g canister. The canister is the reason there is any left: a bag opened on Christmas Eve is soft by Boxing Day, and a canister with the lid pushed back on is the same chip a week later. Give them their own bowl at the drinks end, because the truffle aroma travels.
2. The olives. Kangaroo Island kalamata olives at $7.95 for 185g. Room temperature is where an olive is meant to be, which makes it the one thing on the board happier at eleven at night than at noon on the 25th. Drain them, put out half the jar, and set a second small bowl beside them for the pits.
3. The nuts. Mr Filbert's sea salt mixed nuts at $9.95 for 100g. A 100g bag is exactly one small bowl, so you can count bags at the door rather than weigh anything. Salt is the whole brief here, and it is what keeps people at the bench.
4. The crisp that works on its own. Fig and olive seed crisps at $6.95 for 150g. On Christmas Day a cracker is mostly a vehicle for cheese. On 31 December there is no cheese, so it has to be worth eating by itself: baked flat, studded with fruit and olive, sturdy enough to carry a spoonful. If they have gone, the flat, sturdy end of the crackers range does the same job.
5. Whatever jar is open. Half a tapenade, the last of a chutney, three fingers of relish. Into a small bowl with its own spoon and it stops looking like a leftover. Two jars is plenty.

How much, and when to put it out

Before Christmas lunch we count two or three pieces a person for every half hour of standing around. New Year's Eve holds that rate for the first hour and then halves, because almost everyone eats before they come out. Across a night that starts at nine, 250g a head covers it, the same number as a grazing table laid on before a meal rather than instead of one. Our table of how much food per person at Christmas has the rest.

Then split it in two and be strict about it. Half the packets go out at nine in small bowls, the rest stay sealed in the cupboard. The second wave comes out after midnight, and it is the one that earns its keep, because that is the hour when people are properly hungry and nothing is open. A bowl that has sat out since nine is stale by then. A packet opened at half past twelve is not.

A hot night works in your favour here, because none of this is chilled food. The two hour and four hour rule that governs a Christmas platter is written for cheese, seafood and cold meat, and there is none of that on this board. Chips, nuts, crackers and olives in brine can sit out until the last person leaves.

Buy it in December, not on the 30th

None of this is a special trip. It goes in the same December order as the Christmas half, and the only change is deciding that three of the packets are not for the 25th.

We do not sell the ham, the prawns or the cheese. What we pack by hand in Corio in Victoria is the cupboard half: the crackers, the crisps, the olives, the nuts and the jars. For most of December that half is the supporting cast. On 31 December it is the whole board.

Shipping is free Australia-wide over $100. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. Australia Post carries it from there, so the 31st is a date to order for the week before rather than the day before. If there is sparkling wine for the adults in the room, salt is what it wants beside it, which the chips, nuts and olives supply. Enjoy responsibly.

Questions we get asked

What food should I serve on New Year's Eve? Five things, none of them cooked: hand cooked chips, olives, salted nuts, a seed crisp worth eating on its own, and one jar to spread. Between them that is salt, crunch and something sharp, the whole job at eleven at night.

How much grazing food do I need per person? About 250g a head across the night, the same as a grazing table that comes before a meal. In packets, roughly one canister of chips, one bag of nuts, one jar of olives and a packet of crackers per four people, with a second set held back for after midnight.

What can I put out on New Year's Eve without cooking? All of the above, straight from sealed packets into bowls. For one thing that looks like effort, cut whatever fruit paste is left into thin fingers and sit them beside the last of the cheese. Two minutes, and it reads as a course.

How far ahead can you build a grazing board? A board of sealed dry goods can go out an hour ahead and comes to no harm, which is not true of one carrying cheese and cured meat. Lay out the boards, bowls and spoons in the afternoon, then open the packets at nine.

Everything on this board sits in our festive entertaining essentials range, worth adding to the December order while the better crackers and crisps are still on the shelf. This piece is part of our guide to Christmas food in Australia.