The Shipley Farms Christmas Dinner Guide

Ask Gray where his feeling about food comes from and he does not start with beef. He starts with his grandmother's dining room.

“So I remember grandmother's dining room table was one of those long wooden tables and, uh, and she had all of those expansion extension leaves, you know, the extra wooden section. And so on holidays, Christmas, you know, as the family started to get there, she would say, go to the closet and, you know, pull out the extra leaves. We need to, we need to lengthen the table.”

Gray Shipley

“And so just more and more family would come in, the table would get longer and longer and longer. And, um, and, you know, until, until we outgrew it, you know, the whole family ate at the long table. And then when the extended family would come in, we had to make more tables, but I just always remember my, my grandmother's long table as, uh, the place where the best food I've ever eaten would happen.”

Gray Shipley

That is the image worth holding onto while you plan a Christmas meal. The question is not what impresses people. It is how many leaves the table needs.

What she actually did, and what it cost her

“And, uh, and, uh, and she would single-handedly cook for days and she would have everything prepared in her pans and casserole dishes. She would have multiple refrigerators and freezers in the garage filled to the brim with all of the apple butter and the, uh, green bean casseroles and nothing was ever fancy.”

Gray Shipley

Days of cooking, and multiple freezers in the garage. Worth noticing in that picture: almost all of it was done before anybody arrived. That is the technique, more than any recipe.

Cook something that does not need you

A roast is the honest answer for a full table. It goes in, it takes time rather than attention, and it comes out when people are ready. Steaks are a wonderful meal for four and a difficult one for twelve, because every one of them wants you standing at the heat at the same moment.

• A full table. A roast. Start it early, leave it alone, rest it properly.
• A small table. Steaks, and you get to cook them properly.
• A table that might grow. Cook more than you need. Nobody has ever regretted leftovers at Christmas.

A plan for the day

• Order in October. Not for our sake. So you are choosing from everything rather than what is left.
• Move it to the refrigerator two days ahead. A large roast thaws slowly, and slowly is how you want it.
• Take it out of the cold an hour before it cooks. A roast straight from the refrigerator cooks unevenly.
• Use a thermometer and pull it early. It keeps cooking while it rests.
• Rest it properly. Twenty minutes for a large roast. Use that time for everything else.

Cooking for a number you do not know yet

The long table is a lovely idea and a practical problem. Our advice is to cook for the number you hope for rather than the number confirmed, because leftovers in the week after Christmas are their own small gift, and a table that runs short is remembered for the wrong reason.

When the meal is the occasion

The Sunday Roast Box

A roast feeds a table and asks very little of you once it is in the oven, which is what you want on a day with people in the house.

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The one that rewards a slow afternoon

SB Dry-Aged Chuck Roast, Boneless

Dry-aged boneless chuck roast. Put it in early, leave it alone, and it will be the thing people remember.

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The one to send when it should feel like an occasion

The Steakhouse Box

Steaks, chosen so the person opening it knows immediately that someone spent thought rather than money.

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Order while you still have a choice

“Well, if you order early, uh, go on and get a meat box and we can, uh, we can get it there in time. But if you're the last minute person, uh, Christmas Eve. You can, you can log on at, you know, 10 till midnight and, uh, and still get that gift card out. But, uh, you can't go wrong with a gift card.”

Gray Shipley

Christmas is the busiest stretch of our year. Ordering in October means picking what you want; ordering late means picking from what is left. If you are buying for other people at the same time, do it in one go.

Why any of this matters

“Um, and so that, you know, my appreciation for food stems from the care that my grandmother always took in feeding the whole family when we came together for Christmas and came together for holidays.”

Gray Shipley

That is the whole thing, really. The cooking is in service of the table being full. If you want the method for the slow cuts, it is here, and resting matters more than people think.