Top 3 Classic British Christmas Cooking Shows

Craving a classic English Christmas? Check out these 3 classic Yuletide British cooking specials that you can watch FREE on YouTube.

1. Two Fat Ladies Christmas Special

Join the Two Fat Ladies, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson, for a sumptuous tour of classic Christmas cookery. This pair of mischievous maids famously toured the culinary pleasures of the English countryside with Wright driving a motorcycle and Paterson riding sidecar.

In this 1997 Christmas Special, Wright and Paterson prepare a Christmas feast for the boys of the renowned Winchester Cathedral Choir at The Pilgrims’ School, enjoying several sneak peeks of the choir’s much beloved Christmas performance.

On the menu is a (begrudgingly) vegetarian-friendly egg mousse appetizer, roast goose with goose liver stuffing, a tart Swedish red cabbage sweetened with black treacle, and a glamorous Christmas Pudding ice cream bombe with brandy butter filling.

Lovers of poetry and prose will appreciate the pair’s warm remembrances and colorful references to old English poetry.

Watch Two Fat Ladies Christmas Special here.

2. Delia’s Classic Christmas

Considered by many Brits to be the definitive queen of Christmas cookery, Delia Smith’s television specials inspired the home cooks of Britain for four decades. Her 2009 Christmas series, Delia’s Classic Christmas, is the home cook’s all-in-one holiday lifeline, as Smith encourages her audience to create a stress-free Yuletide kitchen.

“A real classic, homemade British Christmas is part of our history and heritage,” Smith says as she pleads the case for homemade Christmas pudding. The vast menu includes such festive centerpieces as collar of British bacon with blackened crackling and Cumberland sauce, roast turkey with classic sage and onion stuffing, and a vegetarian cheese and parsnip roulade.

Smith’s gentle encouragement and passion for traditional English cuisine will inspire even the most reluctant of home cooks.

Watch Delia’s Classic Christmas here.

3. Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas

Proclaimed “the grande dame of TV cookery” by the Telegraph, Fanny Cradock is among the most iconic cooks in British television. Known for wearing glamorous evening dresses and full make-up while cooking, the ever-controversial Cradock combined a no-nonsense persona with a warm, approachable teaching style.

Though Cradock is scarcely known among the Gordon Ramsay generation, Cradock’s 1975 series Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas remains a classic of English Christmas television. In this series, Fanny presents tips for roasting every type of Christmas bird, revives the traditional round Christmas pudding, and offers creative new uses for mincemeat, which she calls the “Cinderella of Christmas cooking.”

With her penciled-on eyebrows and headmistress-like precision, Cradock convinces her audience to strive for more in their Christmas kitchens.

Watch Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas here.