the 2025 easy-but-fancy holiday menu
8 recipes, a detailed prep guide, and a grocery list sorted by aisle!
I sent the first easy-but-fancy holiday menu in 2023, and since then, it’s become a What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking holiday tradition! It’s one of my very favorite projects to work on every year. Developing the menu, testing the recipes over and over, writing a very detailed plan-of-attack for how you can pull off an incredibly impressive dinner for a group of 6 to 8 people without breaking a sweat, envisioning you all gathered around your holiday tables eating this feast with your family and friends — I love it all!!
This year we’re going to wow your group with a classic beef tenderloin cooked to perfection. If you’ve been too intimidated to cook beef tenderloin — I got you. I learned to slow roast tenderloin like this from Ina Garten and it’s absolutely foolproof. Heads up: you really MUST use an internal probe thermometer like this one when cooking your beef, so go ahead and add to cart now if you don’t already own one. Beef tenderloin is a delicacy worthy of a special occasion, and I will not let you overcook that pricey cut of meat!!!
Our sides for this feast are truly delicious. My mom makes her famous Southern spoon bread — aka savory corn pudding — for pretty much every special occasion meal, and it’s always the first dish to disappear. My friend Jess’s mom recently brought her California version of “corn casserole” to Thanksgiving at Jess’s house and it was met with similar fanfare. I decided right then and there that it was time for my own easy-but-fancy corn pudding/casserole/spoon bread to join the WTC party, and the Meyer lemon ricotta spoon bread you’ll find below is the result. It’s a slightly elevated riff on the total classic that has likely adorned many of your holiday tables, and is just a delight.
We’ll also serve some make-ahead bacon balsamic Brussels sprouts, a fresh and festive Caesar-ish kale salad, some light and delicious apps, and a very special dessert. Here’s the full lineup!
If you’ve hosted a dinner party, you know: cooking the food is often the easy part — it’s all the mental gymnastics behind it that’s draining. Timing everything, making the grocery list, remembering to set the table, budgeting time to blow dry your hair… that’s the hard part. So we’re taking that off your plate, too, with a detailed “plan-of-attack” strategy you’ll find in the PDF at the very bottom of this email. I spell out what you can do 5 days ahead of time, 2 days ahead of time, a day ahead of time, and then hour by hour leading up to the meal.
In the PDF you’ll also find a grocery list organized by aisle, a list of kitchen tools you’ll use, and the recipes themselves.
In the notes section beneath the recipes, you’ll find ideas to make this meal even easier to pull off, dietary swaps for those who need ‘em, what to cook if you’re not hosting a dinner party and just want a weeknight meal, a demo of how to truss your tenderloin, and more!
Now, onto the recipes!
Cook time: 30 to 40 minutes total (10 minutes prep, 20 to 30 minutes cook time)
Ingredients:
