Sunday roast
The Sunday roast is a traditional
British and
Irish main meal served on Sundays , and consisting of roasted meat together with accompaniments. Other names for this meal are
Sunday dinner,
Sunday lunch,
Roast dinner, and
Sunday joint. The tradition arose because the meat could be left in the oven to cook before church on a Sunday morning, and it would be ready when the family arrived home at lunchtime.
Sunday roasts are also common in other
Commonwealth countries such as
Canada and
Australia. In Australia, roasts increasingly featured on the menus of cafes and restaurants are designed to cater to British backpackers.
Encyclopedia
The
Sunday roast is a traditional
British and
Irish main meal served on Sundays , and consisting of roasted meat together with accompaniments. Other names for this meal are
Sunday dinner,
Sunday lunch,
Roast dinner, and
Sunday joint. The tradition arose because the meat could be left in the oven to cook before church on a Sunday morning, and it would be ready when the family arrived home at lunchtime.
Sunday roasts are also common in other
Commonwealth countries such as
Canada and
Australia. In Australia, roasts increasingly featured on the menus of cafes and restaurants are designed to cater to British backpackers.
Typical elements
Typical meats used for a Sunday roast are beef, chicken, lamb, pork, or salmon although seasonally duck, goose, gammon, turkey or other game maybe used. Recently, vegetarian alternatives such as
Quorn or nut roast have also become popular. These are some of the common traditional accompaniments to various meats :
The terms
lamb,
hoggett or
mutton are used to describe the meat of a domestic sheep [i]...
— served with sage and onion
stuffing and mint sauce or redcurrant jelly as a relish
Sunday roasts can be served with a range of boiled and roast vegetables. The Sunday Roast is perhaps one of the last meals where this tradition survives. The vegetables served vary seasonally and regionally, but this will usually include roast potatoes of some type, which have been roasted in meat drippings , and also a
gravy made from bouillon cubes and sometimes with some sort of animal based
roux, or non-animal based Corn flour . Other vegetable dishes served with roast dinner can include mashed
swede,
turnips, boiled
cabbage, roast
parsnips, sliced boiled
carrots and
peas.
Sunday Roast in pubs and restaurants
Many
pubs in Britain serving food have a special "Sunday menu" that features a Sunday Roast, usually with a variety of meats available, and this is often cheaper than the normal menu.
See also:
Pub grubBritish Trends
In recent years, the appearance of news programmes in the Sunday lunchtime slot in British
television schedules has resulted in the term
Sunday Roast being used to describe a searching — and sometimes abrasive — interview of a leading politician. This usage is based on a modern interpretation of the words
roast or
grill to mean a barrage of diffcult questions.
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