Steaming Times For Christmas Puddings

Our answer

Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding (from CHRISTMAS) benefits from some matuting time, though this can be just 6 weeks ahead. If you are making the pudding further in advance then you may prefer to freeze the pudding until closer to Christmas itself. The recipe stipulates a 1.7 litre (3 pint/7 cups/1.7 quarts) basin and the steaming time is initially 5 hours, followed by 3 hours for the second steaming, before eating (usually on Christmas day).

However the pudding batter is also enough to fill two smaller basins, one of 1.2 litres (2 pints/5 cups) and one of 600ml (1 pint/2 1/2 cups). These should be fairly close in size for the 1kg and 500g basins mantioned. For these basins we suggest steaming initially for 3 hours, and then for a further 3 hours before eating. As steaming is a very gentle form of cooking it is difficult to overcook the puddings, so the same steaming time for both size basins is fine.