If you are hosting Christmas dinner and you have invited friends and family, then you need to take the time to plan your perfect Christmas dinner to impress your guests. Most people stick to a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings the main course. However, there are more options when it comes to choosing starters for a Christmas dinner.
Here is our guide to choosing starters for Christmas dinner, along with some of our suggestions to inspire you.
Choosing the Best Starters for Christmas Dinner
When deciding which is the best starter for a Christmas dinner, you should consider your personal preferences and your cooking skills. You should also consider if you want to follow the cooking traditions of your country, or if you will take inspiration from Christmas food traditions worldwide. However, there are other considerations to make.
For example, how many courses are you serving? If you are serving lots of courses, then you may choose to serve more than one appetizer. If you are serving multiple accompaniments with your roast turkey, then you may also prefer to choose a light starter.
There are further considerations to make if your guests have specific dietary requirements, such as people who are vegan or who are on a dairy-free or gluten-free diet. If this is the case, you must decide whether to serve the same starter for everyone or make different starters to meet different needs.
Time is another consideration. Nobody wants to spend Christmas Day in the kitchen, as you will want to enjoy the day with your friends and family. Therefore, you should consider whether you can make a starter in advance or choose something that is quick and easy to make on the day.
Regardless of your preferences and the dietary requirements of your guests, The Fruity Tart has plenty of suggestions to inspire your menu. The following are ideas for starters for Christmas dinner that are easy to make and delicious.
Soup Starters for Christmas Day
Soup is a great option for a starter for your Christmas Day meal. It is light enough not to fill you up too much and spoil your main course. Soups are also a way of serving a colourful dish that is full of flavour and starts your Christmas dinner with a bang.
They are also quick and easy to make, especially if you have a soup maker, as you can just leave the ingredients to cook and get on with making the rest of the Christmas dinner. Check out our article on the best soups for Christmas dinner starters at our sister site, Super Souper Ed, or read our recommendations for 10 easy soups.
Vegetarian Starters
If you are a vegetarian or have a vegetarian guest for dinner, you will find the following ideas useful. However, vegetarian starters are a good option regardless of whether you follow a plant-based diet or not due to the heavy meat content in a traditional Christmas dinner.
- Stuffed courgette boats: Slice courgettes in half, fill them with the filling of your choice and sprinkle over cheese. Then, bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the cheese and the edges of the courgette have turned golden.
- Cheese tartlets: We have several tartlet recipes on our site. These include a cheese and tomato tartlet and a cheese and onion tartlet recipe. You can also combine all three filling ingredients to create cheese, tomato, and onion tartlets if you prefer.
- Stilton and walnut salad: A tasty starter that you can whip up in five minutes is a stilton and walnut salad. The fresh salad leaves combined with the tart, creamy cheese flavours and the walnuts’ earthiness are mouth-watering.
- Baked pears with blue cheese: Hardly any effort is required to make baked pears with blue cheese. Just halve and core the pears, sprinkle with blue cheese and bake in the oven. Blue cheese and pears are a marriage made in heaven.
- Cheese and biscuits: Many people serve cheese and biscuits between the main course and the dessert or as an alternative to dessert. However, you can also serve your favourite selection of cheese and biscuits at the beginning of the meal to get your taste buds flowing.
Vegan Starters for Christmas Day
- Vegan mushroom and walnut pate: Full of flavour and easy to make, this vegan pate also has a good texture. You can make it the day before to save you time on Christmas Day. You can serve the pate with the bread or toast of your choice.
- Crudités and dips: One of the fastest starters to make is crudités and dips, especially if you buy the dips. However, most dips are easy to make, and you can prepare many the day before. Read our guide to dips and accompaniments for inspiration. You can present this starter in the middle of the table. Therefore, your guests can help themselves.
- Vegan stuffed mushrooms: Stuffed mushrooms are delicious, easy to make, and many different stuffing options exist. Our article about stuffed mushrooms will give you some inspiration. Some examples include garlic and herbs or ratatouille.
- Melon and port: One of the simplest no-cook starters for Christmas dinner is a halved Cantaloupe melon drizzled with port.
- Fruit platter: Another easy no-cook starter is a fruit platter. You can choose to serve a sharing platter for everyone to share or to serve individual portions of chopped fruit. When I served this a couple of years ago, I poured ginger wine over the fruit- any excuse for alcohol.
- Saag Aloo: To inject a little spice into your celebratory meal, then why not give our saag aloo recipe a try? This Indian spiced spinach dish is usually served as an accompaniment. However, it is also a tasty starter for Christmas dinner.
- Bombay potatoes: Another way to add some spice is to serve Bombay potatoes as a starter for Christmas dinner. Like saag aloo, this spiced potato dish is usually served as an accompaniment, but it works equally well as a starter.
For more ideas for vegan food, check out our reviews of the best vegan cookbooks.
Christmas Dinner Starters with Fish
Seafood or fish starters for Christmas dinner are a good contrast if you are serving meat in your main course. Here are our suggestions for simple starters for Christmas dinner that have fish or seafood as the central ingredient.
- Salmon pate with cream cheese: You can make this easy smoked salmon pate with cream cheese using either cooked salmon or raw smoked salmon. Serve the pate with your choice of bread or toast.
- Smoked mackerel pate with lemon: If you buy cooked smoked mackerel, then this mackerel pate with lemon recipe takes just minutes to make. Therefore, you have plenty of time left for preparing the rest of the meal.
- Baked salmon with lemon: Simply bake small portions of salmon in the oven with lemon and butter. Then, serve with a salad garnish.
- Tuna Fishcakes with lightly spiced mayonnaise: Another great recipe to consider using for your starter on Christmas day is our tuna fishcakes with lightly spiced mayonnaise.
Other Seafood Starters
- Tempura prawns with sweet chilli dip: Those who like a little spice in their food might like to make tempura prawns with a sweet chilli dip. Tempura batter is a thin batter that adds a little crunch to the prawns.
- Scallops with pancetta and pea puree: Make a pea puree by blitzing garden peas with a splash of cream or some melted butter. Then, fry your pancetta till it is crisp. Next, pan-fry the scallops for a couple of minutes on each side until the tops and bottoms have turned golden. Arrange the scallops over the pea puree, and sprinkle with pieces of the fried pancetta.
- Prawn cocktail: One of the classic starters for Christmas dinner, prawn cocktail is a dish you can throw together in minutes. Add prawns to a bed of lettuce, then add some Marie Rose sauce. I also like to add some tomato, cucumber, and avocado to my prawn cocktails. It is tasty served with brown bread and butter.
Starters with Meat
Although meat is usually part of Christmas dinner, there is no reason why you cannot serve different meat in the starter. Here are our ideas for meat starters for Christmas dinner.
- Chicken liver pate with brandy: Our easy-to-make chicken and liver pate with brandy is a delicious option for a Christmas Day starter idea. Serve it with salad garnish and the bread or toast of your choice.
- Bacon and cheese-loaded potato skins with soured cream: Bake jacket potatoes, cut in half, then scoop out the soft centre. Use the soft potato to make mashed potato for your main course. Cut the potato skins into strips and deep fry until crisp. Top with crispy bacon and melted cheese, then serve with a soured cream dip.
- Savoury pancakes: Although pancakes are most typically associated with Shrove Tuesday, you can eat them at any time of the year. Our savoury pancakes contain a filling of cream cheese, mushrooms and bacon.
- Chilli stuffed peppers: Those who enjoy eating different flavours in each of their courses may consider chilli stuffed peppers. You can make the chilli in advance and freeze until Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve, take the chilli out of the freezer to defrost. Bake pepper halves in the oven for ten minutes, then remove to fill with the chilli. You can also top with cheese if you wish. Return the stuffed peppers to the oven. You can see the full instructions for this recipe here.
- Individual pork pies with chutney: Mix some sausage meat with the herbs of your choice and fill a pastry case. Add a lid, seal, and glaze, before baking in the oven for 30 minutes. Serve hot or cold with salad leaves, our caramelized red onion chutney and pickles.
- Pancetta-wrapped stuffed mushrooms: Combine cream cheese, herbs, breadcrumbs, and chopped mushroom stalks. Stuff the mushrooms with the filling, then wrap the pancetta around the mushrooms. Bake in the oven until the pancetta is crisp.
Other Tips for Preparing Starters for Christmas Dinner
- Make in advance: If there are any elements that you can make in advance, then this will save you time on Christmas Day. For example, last year I made cheese and tomato tartlets as starters for Christmas dinner. I part-baked the pastry cases in advance, then put them in the freezer. All I had to soon Christmas Day was to add the filling and put them in the oven for 15 minutes.
- Get organized: Make a list of what you need for the starter and the rest fo the meal. Cross ingredients off the list as you buy them. Lay everything out ready before starting to make your starter for Christmas dinner.
- Don’t get stressed: It is just one meal once a year. It is really not worth getting stressed about.
These are just some ideas for starters for Christmas dinner to give you some inspiration. Feel free to browse through our recipes for more inspiration. It is possible to make smaller versions of many of our main courses to create starters for Christmas dinner.
You may like to read our guide to pairing wine with turkey.