It's Considered Extremely Unlucky To Eat These Foods Before The New Year—Make These Recipes Instead

Crab, lobster, and other crustaceans move backward or side to side, so eating them on New Year's can symbolize major setbacks instead of forward motion.

You can still get your seafood fix, though—just swap in for any fish that swims forward—like salmon or tuna—in recipes like our blackened honey-glazed salmon bites, our baked salmon sushi cups (pictured here), or our spicy tuna rolls.

If you're like us, you've got a loooong list of to-dos around the house post-holidays. Here's your excuse not to do those dishes, take out that trash, wash those clothes, sweep your house... if you do, you might accidentally clean your luck right out of your home, and you definitely don't want that!

Instead, order some take out or use your slow-cooker to make a classic party dip (like our crockpot spinach-artichoke dip, pictured here), and serve your party guests off of disposable plates (these are our favorites). Try and relax this New Year's—the mess will still be there for you tomorrow.

If you don't want your luck to fly away in the new year, it's best to avoid any animal that has wings and scratches in the dirt, like turkey or chicken. Alternatively, eating pork is supposed to inspire progress throughout the year to come, both because of a pig's girthy size (mmm, prosperity) and the fact that they root forward. Pork is often paired with cabbage in the form of sauerkraut on New Year's, but we say, anything goes:

Make our classic pulled pork (awesome on sliders!), our cheesy scalloped potato & ham stacks (pictured here), our chicharrones, or our croque monsieur bites to get yourself out of a rut in 2025.

There are many stories about where the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's comes from—they ALL say the beans will bring good luck in the form of money in the New Year. As the saying goes, if you "eat poor on New Year's, [you'll] eat fat the rest of the year."

Check out our guide on how to cook black-eyed peas, then try our black-eyed pea salad or our black-eyed pea bruschetta (pictured here) to bring prosperity into your home this NYE.

In Ireland, it's said that there are so many traditions involving bread on New Year's that January 1 is known to some as the "Day Of Buttered Bread." One entails banging bread against a door frame to chase away bad luck, while another invites good luck in by sharing the baking bounty with friends, loved ones, and neighbors.

Whatever tradition you adhere to, don't leave that bread naked and alone! Instead, make a compound butter to spread atop it—may we recommend our garlic butter, our Tuscan butter, or our red wine butter (pictured here)?

If you want your luck to come full circle in the New Year, round desserts, like donuts, layer cakes, truffles, cookies, and more are the way to go.

Check out our tiramisu truffles, our rum crumb cake (pictured here), our Nutella-stuffed cookies, or our baked Alaska for ideas, but pretty much anything not baked in a square pan goes (sorry brownies, see ya next year!).

At midnight on New Year's Eve in Spain and Mexico, people try to eat 12 grapes as quickly as possible, one for luck for each of the 12 months ahead. Take our advice (and learn from our mistakes!), and don't just shovel 12 plain grapes in.

Instead, make our Sour Patch grapes, our Prosecco grapes (pictured here), our sangria grapes, or our 12 grapes cocktail to make the whole experience extra festive.

Over New Year's in Greece, you'll find onions hanging from doorways, a tradition that dates back to Ancient Greece when they were thought to increase fertility. Now they're a sign of new things to come (as many as their are layers!).

You could just fling some onions around your party 😜, OR you could make some caramelized onions and turn them into a myriad of apps. Our suggestions? Our caramelized onion dip, our caramelized onion & goat cheese bites, or our baked goat cheese with caramelized onions (pictured here).

Did you know that popping Champagne on New Year's has been around since the 1800s?! It was a drink associated with wealth and nobility, so drinking it at midnight (and all night long) is a way to welcome prosperity into your own life for the upcoming year.

It's lovely on its own, of course, but for a party, mixing up a Champagne cocktail—like our cranberry mimosas, our French 75, our holiday punch (pictured here), or our Champagne margaritas—is even better.

Particularly on New Year's, slicing into bread and finding a massive air pocket is said to be an omen for death. The problem is, almost ALL breads have them! We're not going to chance it, so instead we're making a stuffed bread appetizer that guarantees we'll continue to be full of life (and yummy dips 😉).

Try our pesto pizza stuffed star bread (pictured here), our goat cheese stuffed rolls, or our cranberry brie pull-apart bread.

Pomegranate seeds have long been affiliated with fertility and life, and in Greece, the whole fruit is thrown across the floor to release as many seeds as possible to represent abundance in the New Year.

If you're adhering to slide 3 and avoiding cleaning right now, use our tutorial on how to cut a pomegranate without making a mess, then use them to make our pomegranate martini, our fancy holiday cheese ball, our muhammara dip (pictured here), or our pomegranate mimosas instead.

A long-time German tradition is the breaking of a New Year's pretzel (or neujahrsbrezel) for luck and prosperity. It can be eaten either at midnight or for breakfast on New Year's Day. Unlike the pretzels we're more familiar with in the states, these German ones are made of a sweet enriched dough, sort of like a babka or brioche.

If you're, uh, not in the mood to make your own sweet German pretzels, we say it's enough to just serve pretzels at your NYE party. What's really important is sharing and breaking them with loved ones (the pretzels also represent interconnectedness), so we think using store-bought options in a mix (like our homemade Chex Mix, pictured here) or served alongside our beer cheese or our jalapeño popper dip works just as well.

They say if you leave some food on your plate at the end of the night, the coming year will be one of plenty. So skip the clean plate club and do future you a favor in more ways than one by packing away some leftovers at the end of the meal.