Christmas dinner ideas from 17 cuisines, lightened

The best Christmas dinner ideas aren't new dishes. They're the dishes 17 different kitchens already cook every December, made a little lighter so you can eat them more than once a year. Here are the ones worth stealing, chapter by chapter, with what each one weighs before and after.

One thing first, and I'll say it again at the end. Cook the real Christmas dinner on the day. Every winter on the base, from my second one on, I cooked Christmas dinner for a full hall, and nobody asked me to lighten it. I didn't. These are for the rest of the season: the Sunday before, the friends who turn up on the 27th, the week of leftovers and buffets where most of December's food actually happens.

The roast: Christmas dinner ideas for the centrepiece

Everyone waits for the roast, and it's also where most of the protein is, which is why lightening it works. You take the fat off the cut, not the meat out of the dinner.

Roast Gammon is the one I'd cook for a crowd. A gammon with its fat trimmed carves just as well, glazes just as well, and goes from 734 to 431 kcal a serving. You lose the strip of crisp fat along the top, and that's the honest cost.

Kaczka z Jablkami Roast Duck is the biggest change in the chapter. A whole duck with its skin becomes skinless breast roasted with apples, and it drops from 1,186 to 418 kcal. It's a different dish, and the book says so. For a small table it's a good one.

If you'd rather carve beef than wrestle a turkey, Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding keeps the Yorkshire puddings, because a Christmas roast without them is just a Tuesday. Lean topside replaces the marbled rib, the butter comes out of the gravy, and it still carries 66g of protein a serving.

Christmas Eve dinner ideas: the night before

Much of Europe eats its big Christmas meal on the 24th, and much of it is meatless. Poland's Wigilia supper starts with beetroot soup, Mexico's Nochebuena means tamales, and plenty of Italian-American families cook fish.

Barszcz with Uszka Mushroom Dumplings floating in it is the gentlest start to any Christmas meal I know. Baccala Mantecato is the one that surprises people: the classic whips salt cod with a great deal of olive oil, and swapping most of that oil for potato takes it from 738 to 383 kcal while keeping 35g of protein. There's more on this in Christmas Eve dinner ideas.

Side dishes, where the butter hides

Sides are where a Christmas dinner gets heavy without anyone noticing. Nobody counts the butter in the cabbage or the cream in the corn.

Rotkohl, the German red cabbage, needs no butter at all; the apple and vinegar do the work. Candied Yams loses the butter and most of the sugar and goes from 412 to 191 kcal. Some sides barely move, like Tzimmes, and the table shows that too. The full set is in Christmas side dishes, lightened.

Party food that goes first

From mid-December somebody always has to make 40 things on sticks. These are the plates that empty first, and most of them are fried, which is exactly why they lighten so well: a hot oven and a brush of oil replace a pan of fat.

Spring Rolls come out of the oven at 221 kcal against 429 deep-fried. Chicken Satay on chicken breast instead of thigh keeps 40g of protein a serving. More in Christmas appetizers.

New Year, for luck

New Year's food is mostly eaten for luck, and the lucky dishes tend to be generous. Black-Eyed Peas is eaten on New Year's Day across the American South; trading the pork belly for smoked gammon keeps the smoke and 27g of protein. In Japan the year ends with Sukiyaki. Both are in New Year's Eve dinner ideas.

Puddings: one slice, properly

Christmas puddings are made of butter, sugar and more butter, so these show the biggest cuts and the biggest compromises. I'd rather you ate one proper slice of something good than three of something sad.

Stollen keeps its marzipan and loses most of its butter, going from 443 to 286 kcal a slice. Churros are baked rather than fried. Sticky Toffee Pudding is still sticky toffee pudding, with half the butter in the sponge. There's a fuller list in Christmas desserts from around the world.

The whole dinner, counted

Put the four-dish dinner from the book together (roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, red cabbage, rumbledethumps and sticky toffee pudding) and it comes to 2,184 kcal a person made traditionally. Made the lighter way it's 1,394 kcal, and it's still Christmas dinner. The working is in a traditional Christmas dinner, counted.

How these were chosen

Every dish here comes from one of the 17 books in the Authentic-ish series, and each one is printed in Authentic-ish Christmas twice: the traditional version first, described properly, then the lighter one with the exact changes and what each one costs you. Every figure is computed from the recipe's weighed ingredients against public food databases, and every dish links to its own page with the full numbers. The whole dataset is in the Authentic-ish Calorie Index.

So cook the real thing on the day. Use these for the other eleven days.