Meat and Two Veg?

[theclassroom]

Completely random thing to post I know, so I hope it’s in the right place. Who, in 2025, still eats ‘meat and two veg’? It’s something I haven’t heard of in a very long time and when I did hear it growing up it was always from elderly people (or a joke about men’s private parts…)

I know it was a traditional way to eat in the past but I can’t imagine ever choosing to making it. I don’t love traditionally British food of any kind, besides fish and chips and maybe mashed potatoes, so I’m probably not the target audience but I’m hearing it around again.

I don’t like a Sunday roast either but it seems much better than a dinner of meat and two veg. I don’t know, the name and the food itself depresses me. 😩

So if you still eat it, what makes you choose it over the many cuisines and dishes available I guess?

For lunch, I often have salmon with cucumber/carrot salad and kimchi. That’s literally meat and two veg (well 3 if you count everything in the salad). But not a traditional meal at all.

If potatoes count as one of the veg then we eat like this most nights: meat, potatoes and veg.

Totally agree, one of my faves is a beautiful piece of fresh cod, pan fried with a bit of butter and olive oil, with S&P and some lemon or fresh herbs of some kind, over a big bed of green veggies or roasted vegetables. Yum!

I’ve been cooking since I was a teenager, I moved out very young, but there are so many recipes to try!

When he was growing up DH had a very limited diet and it was on a weekly rota, sausage mash and beans on a Monday, pizza and chips on a Friday, roast on a Sunday etc so we never have the same meal in the same month (probably) and try something new or slightly different every day unless we really fancy something we made in the past.

I'd consider a Sunday roast meat and 2 veg. I have lots of meals that would fall under that. Sausage, mash and veg. Chicken, new potatoes and veg, Shepherds Pie, pork chops, potatoes and veg, steak, chips and veg.

We have a variation of meat and 2 veg probably every night tbh, including tonight - steak, some kind of potato and some kind of green veg.
Last night was chicken wrapped in Parma ham stuffed with a goats cheese mixture served with sautéed potatoes and Cavalo Nero.
Meat and 2 veg is our most common kind of dinner!

Salmon fillets, mix fresh chopped herbs, oil, lemon juice, garlic and chilli and drizzle all over the top. Place in roasting dish, cover with foil, bake at 180 fan for 15 mins.

or mix any sort of curry paste with lime juice yoghurt and oil, spread over the fish fillets. Or just drizzle over plenty of oyster sauce. For those ones bake covered for half the time then take the foil off, it gives a nicer finish. Loads of things, just make it up with whatever’s nice. The fish should be just cooked.

Or, pan fried sea bass fillets, or mackerel fillets. Or swordfish or tuna steaks. Loads of things.

I guess I sort of eat "meat and 2 veg" all the time, but in the form of:

• A chicken breast, some asparagus, avocado and bulgur wheat.
• Or lamb kofta, courgettes, aubergine and couscous.
• Or a salmon fillet, brocoli and sweet potato.
• etc

But pork chop, cabbage, swede and potato? No

I think lots of us eat the things you do, but also the other meals as well. It’s not either or. It’s a good way to enjoy quality ingredients and can be a bit healthier too.

I don't think it was anything to do with rationing. More to do with lack of hob space and no microwaves. People who didn't grow their own vegetables would have bought them from a greengrocer and would have had to buy what was in season. There would have been very few imported vegetables, and imported fruit would have been mostly oranges and bananas, I think. There would have been next to no frozen food available so if you wanted something that wasn't in season you'd have to buy it in a tin, if you could find one and it it was affordable.

Back in the days when most Britons had never left these shores except to wage war or serve the British Empire, traditional British food was some form of meat, roasted, boiled, fried or grilled, or turned into a stew, served with potatoes and one or two other vegetables, typically cabbage or another brassica, plus a root vegetable (carrots, swede, parsnips), and if stewed often involving onions or leeks. Nothing wrong with this at all if well cooked, which unfortunately it wasn't always. Vegetables tended to be cooked for far too long. Meat was often tough.

Sometimes for variety there was fish instead of meat, or a dish based on eggs and/or cheese. The meat might be served as a pie filling, either in pastry or under a potato topping. Cold meat might be served with baked potatoes or chips and salad, pickles etc. The truly adventurous occasionally made a curry and served it with overboiled rice and little plates of desiccated coconut and sliced banana (don't know why!), or had a go at cooking massively long strands of spaghetti and serving it with ready-grated Parmesan that tasted like unwashed socks (nothing like real Parmesan).

I am in my mid 60s and I grew up in a Scottish family eating mostly very plain traditional food. I have the good fortune to come from a long line of good plain cooks so it was decent grub. Since leaving home, however, I've succumbed to the same siren song as most others of my age or younger, and we eat a lot of meals where the meat is mixed up with the veg and the carbs at the cooking stage. Nothing wrong with the old approach, though, if each element is cooked properly.

Loads of meals are meat and 2 veg. I can’t believe you never eat meat with vegetables?

Basically how I model every meal

pork loin steak with roasted tenderstem broccoli and asparagus
chicken breast with sweetcorn and greenbeans
slow cooked beef in gravy with carrots and sugarsnap peas
stir fried turkey strips with beansprouts and mushrooms

We are a "meat" and 2 veg family. I have fussy and dietary restricted eaters and I'm not cooking lots of different things.
So we have say, a pork chop, with non meat equivalent (quorn escalope maybe) with brocolli, peas, carrots and chips/baked potato/roast potatoes/mash.

Tonight - hunters chicken - I'm wrapping a chicken breast with bacon, covering in cheese and bbq sauce (wrapping a quorn fillet in this is not bacon etc...)... peas, roasted corn on the cob and green beans with potato wedges.
It's easy when cooking veggie, non veggie,coeliac, non coeliac etc

People have different tastes to each other and eat what they like, breaking news.

Rationing again. No, it wasn't the result of the war. British people have eaten like this for centuries - the ones that could afford meat, anyway. The poorest people have always had to eke the expensive meat out with beans, peas, lentils, barley, potatoes (once they arrived from the Americas), root vegetables, cabbages and onions, i.e. soups, stews, pottages, with a very dense wholemeal bread to fill up the corners and soak up the liquid part of the dish. Well made, a good stew or soup is a lovely thing and can be packed with vegetables.

lots of kids don’t like sauces and casseroles

They are missing out. A well-made stew is a thing of glory. There is hope, though. My son wouldn't touch a stew as a child (fortunately his sister was not picky at all) but he'll eat almost anything now. Phew.

Ok calm down

Well if you don’t like Sunday roast, which to me is meat and 2 veg, then that’s your problem. Plenty of us do. Maybe you don’t cook then very well.

Lean pork steaks with carrots, broccoli and peas is a mid week staple for us!
I usually do a “proper” roast on a Sunday though, the full works. It’s lovely.

Why are you so defensive? 😂 It’s not my ‘problem’ as I don’t like it, so we just make other meals. I don’t know if you read the whole thing but I do like a Sunday roast if it’s done well, I just find that rare.

If I do enjoy a roast it’s: seasoned meat, honey glazed roasted carrots and parsnips, garlic asparagus, horseradish mashed potatoes or roast potatoes in fat, sprouts with bacon, giant Yorkshire puddings, cabbage in white wine vinegar or with creamy leeks etc.

All the elements have to be specifically cooked to make them more interesting and that’s very time consuming and (in my opinion) it’s still not as good as other, much easier, dishes. That’s what we do for Christmas, and if anyone asks for it but it’s not a common thing at all.

What do you like with your roast? I was trying to think of all of my preferred sides for the last post but I don’t have them often so could do with some ideas! :)

I often cook steak served with sautéed French beans and roast carrots. I guess that's meat and two veg and its delicious!

The key to a good Sunday or Christmas roast is the gravy, IMNVHO. I use the roasting juices and thicken it a bit with Bisto powder (not granules), which is just cornflour, salt and colouring, I think. At Christmas I make stock from the turkey giblets and use that. Though I say it myself, it's wonderful. If I make a vegetarian roast I make an onion gravy, which is also full of flavour. Nothing watery or under-seasoned here!

For me, meat and two could mean:

• pan-fried garlicky chicken with steamed asparagus & baby corn and mash, with gravy
• Smoked gammon with cavolo nero and corn on the cob with boiled new potatoes
• grilled marinated pork chop with carrot, red pepper and couscous

I hate cooking but am concerned about UPF's and other of my unhealthy eating habits so I have gone back almost exclusively to meat and two veg. I have a freezer full of fillets of salmon, pork, chicken etc and weekly buy potatoes and a range of veg. Each morning I defrost a protein and in the evening cook it and potatoes and veg. It is quick and simple and saves me thinking about food. But I am just feeding myself.