Please help, broken oven and I have a Christmas dinner to cook

I AM going to say "I told you so" ?

Can you explain the situation to your butcher and see if he'll give you something else instead of duck?

I'd do saute potatoes, although you can make okay deep-fried roasties on the hob.

Why can't you get someone out tomorrow?

on christmas eve? ?

Yes, I suspect it's one of those situations where if you're willing to throw enough money at the problem you can get it sorted. Depends where MH is, obviously.

Is it possible to cook duck on the BBQ?

I wouldn't be paying him a penny, I can tell you ? Fuckwit.

Oh no, poor you, he sounds like a nightmare but I'd be doing the same as you and not wanting to pay someone else. I would however make sure I got a fully itemised bill including labour & parts.

For Christmas dinner, I'd go for something you could hob cook (but I don't have a slow cooker), saute potatoes and steamed veg sound good.

We are having Chicken for Christmas dinner this year and I am doing that in our slow cooker - its how I always cook it and it comes out really tender and delicious ! I'm not sure how it would work for duck though - maybe google and see what you can find? I will be putting my chicken in ( 2 kg) either late tomorrow night on low or very early Christams day ( about 6am) - we are eating about 2pm. I just put it on some halved/quartered onions, garlic and rosemary. I also cook it upside down. Dont touch it apart from to baste it a couple of times- and when its done lift it out very carefully as the meat will just fall of it.

found this which mentions cooking duck - suggests cooking cuts so maybe your butcher could do that for you -?

http://www.slowcookerrecipes.org.uk/slow_cooking_chicken.htm

May be a silly idea but can you get some sort of table top oven type thing from Argos or somewhere?

My uncle always cooks his Christmas turkey on his barbeque (apparently it's delicious) so i'd have thought it would be possible to do a duck in the same way?

Http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/4230285/Trail/searchtext%3ETABLE+TOP+OVEN.htm

Well we have spatchcock chicken on the BBQ in summer, can you do the same with Duck? Or howabout asking the butcher for a spactcock chicken and BBQ it(just a chicken flattend out). We wrap ours in foil with rosemary, olive oil, white wine, garlic etc....

I think the duck would be a problem on the BBQ because of its fattyness. I would probably swap the duck for a turkey/chicken/beef joint or get the butcher to cut the duck up and cook it in the slow cooker.

Are you having lots of people over? I think you're in Brighton so I'd contact a local hotel that's going to be open and see if you can collect a mercy dash takeaway - I couldn't be bothered with faffing about with all the different timings for things on the hob/barbecue/slow cooker/candle flame. Hotel du Vin would be my best bet.

(Yes I am lazy and I'm going out to lunch on the 25th!)

Knock on a neighbour? They're going to have their oven on anyway