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Are you planning to host Thanksgiving or Christmas this year? Maybe you’re planning to host both or maybe even Hanukkah for extended family and friends of the Jewish persuasion? Whatever your family’s special occasion or holiday it is, there’s a very good chance it could involve a variety of yummy side dishes. To make sure all of those dishes make it to the table, you will need some serving vessels to complement your holiday table! By vessels we mean bowls and platters. These vessels can also help decorate your holiday table as well.
The best time to start shopping for your serving vessels is NOW! This is when a lot of the holiday dishes and serving item are HOT and on SALE online. Amazon Prime Day is around the corner and you can catch a few deals running now on both less winter holiday-themed and new winter-themed. If you find some winter-themed serving dishes and platters, those might work just as nicely as holiday-themed items and gifts. We have a few hand-painted porcelain wear with sleigh rides and snow scenes, snowflakes, and wintry forest scenes.
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How Many Bowls? Bowls, and sizes of bowls, are key when serving side dishes. For example, you might want to serve some family recipes as side dishes for your holiday meal. Depending on what you are planning to serve or how many different items you will have, it will require at least two or three medium and large serving bowls. The larger bowls hold more of what most people will want (e.g., mashed potatoes and corn) while the smaller bowls serve up sides fewer people will eat (e.g., green beans, candied yams). Select your bowls based on the number of guests you will have too. If you know that you will have sixteen people dining, double the number of bowls so that there’s a complete set of bowls for all sides at opposite ends of the table and people don’t have to keep passing serving dishes.
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If you also serve a soup or holiday punch/nog, you will need a soup tureen or a punch bowl. The soup tureen should be set where everyone can access it, usually off to the side on a buffet table where it can’t be knocked over or tipped by accident. Soups are too difficult to pass around a table, which is why the tureen has to be somewhere stationary and accessible. The punch/nog bowl should be placed where everyone is gathering to visit before the meal.
Basic to Super-Elegant and a Few Serving Tips That Help Keep Holiday Stress Low
Your serving platters and bowls should reflect how elegant and festive you expect your gathering to be. You can buy everything from basic snow-white bowls and platters with no decorative features at all to silver plated and gold-gilted and edged platters. If you are just doing a basic lunch of holiday leftovers the day or days after you celebrate, you might want to invest in a few of the plainer bowls and platters for this purpose. If you are really going all out to invite extended family to celebrate a major fall or winter holiday, you might want gold and silver or serving items with molded three-dimensional porcelain accents on them.
How Many Serving Trays
Meats are traditionally served on platters instead of in bowls. You will need one platter for each type of meat you serve at the meal. For example, a platter for ham, a platter for turkey, a platter for goose, etc., is practically a requirement to avoid mixing meats and making a mess of the seasonings and flavors of each meat.
Make sure the trays have a nice lip around the edges to contain meat juices. Nobody likes passing a meat platter and getting dripped on by the juices. Be sure the meat is properly cut up or sliced so that it is easy to pick up and serve with the serving fork. If you are only featuring one protein choice at a holiday party, you only need one really good serving platter.
If you are not sure which way you are going in terms of a festive family gathering, or you want different and very cheap serving accessories for the children’s table, buy a little of everything that is basic and elegant. Save the nicer looking elegant items for the adult table and the plain and easily replaceable items for the children’s table. That way if the kids drop something and it breaks you won’t be quite as unnerved about what it costs.
