Whether you are inviting extended family into your home or throwing a Friendsgiving dinner party, taking on the responsibility for a holiday meal can be daunting. I have the solution for your holiday dinner anxiety – alcohol! No, I am not encouraging you to drink your holiday stress away. Put the alcohol in the food! Each course of the meal can be enhanced by adding beer, wine, or spirits into the dishes or by pairing the course with a compatible drink. Alcohol not only adds flavor to food, but it brings out the flavors of other components in a dish. Bring on the hootch!
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Start out the evening with some simple wine and cheese pairings. Guests can nosh and mingle while you finish up your dinner prep.
If you have access to freshly made cheese, by all means, do that! If not, you can usually find a small selection of tasting cheeses at the grocery store. Try to have an assortment of soft cheeses like brie and Munster and hard cheeses like cheddar and gouda. You can do a bit of research on wine and cheese pairings before you shop or you can ask a knowledgeable salesperson for assistance. Chardonnay and Riesling are good white wine choices for a variety of cheeses, as is Merlot as a red selection.
Serve the cheeses on a platter with small signs indicating the name of each variety. Round out the offering with crackers, fruit, nuts, or olives. Be sure you have both a bottle opener and a cheese knife on hand as well!
If you are adopting a more formal setting for your dinner, serve the cheese plate AFTER dinner, not before. A cheese course is traditionally served mid-meal, after the main course and before dessert.
Liquor, wine, and beer can all add to the flavor of a holiday meal. Roasts can be injected with alcoholic beverages to increase flavor internally, marinades containing alcohol add flavor to cuts of meat, and liquid reductions make tasty glazes for ham and seafood. The Noble Pig winery blog features a delicious recipe for ham with a rum and coke glaze. If you are new to cooking holiday meals, baked ham is a low-risk way to ease yourself into the process.
The meat dish isn’t the only part of the main course that can benefit from some liquor love. The Pioneer Woman shared a recipe for whiskey glazed carrots on her blog. Carrots do well with sweet glazes, and a jolt of whiskey will kick the taste up a notch. Beer, red wine, bourbon, whiskey, and rum all translate well into glazes and reductions for vegetables.
While there are many desserts that call for alcohol within the recipe itself – trifles and tiramisu being prime examples — you can cater to your guests’ tastes by offering an alcohol-laced sauce on the side of a traditional holiday dessert. Any pie can be enhanced with a drizzle of this Salted Bourbon Caramel – even a pie that was secretly purchased from the local bakery. I won’t tell if you won’t.
SALTED BOURBON CARAMEL SAUCE
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. water
1/2 c. heavy cream
1 tsp. sea salt
1/2 oz. bourbon
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Over medium heat, cook sugar with water in a small saucepan. Watch carefully, stirring mixture occasionally until a deep golden color is reached. Do not let it burn!
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Add cream to the mixture slowly. Stir continuously.
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Add sea salt and bourbon and stir until combined.
- Serve warm over your holiday dessert. The sauce is especially tasty over apple, pecan, or pumpkin pie.
Of course, you can always use alcohol for its most obvious use: drinking! While it is always considerate to have a few different beverages from which your guests can choose, you can also offer a signature cocktail for the evening. With just a very few ingredients you can serve either a hot or cold cider cocktail that your guests are sure to love!
SPIKED CIDERTINI
3 oz. cold apple cider
1 oz. Jack Daniel’s Winter Jack
Rim a martini glass with salted caramel. Mix together cider and Winter Jack and pour into the glass. Serve cold.
WINTER JACK HOT CIDER
5 oz. hot apple cider
1 1/2 oz. Winter Jack
Mix together cider and Winter Jack. Pour into a mug and top with whipped cream and salted caramel.