to hate this obsession with Sunday Lunch.

[fckUsundaylunch]

Yes I get that years ago everybody worked long hours and Sunday was the only time people could gather together to eat.
But times have changed.

If I get up on a Sunday and it's a really nice day, rather than spend all morning cooking, we will go out for the day.
We'll have the Sunday lunch on another day during the week..
I don't want my whole day to revolve around a meal.

My DM is always horrified ^But You have to have Sunday Lunch!''
'How can you not have Sunday Lunch?
Me Why?
DM ''Because it's Sunday!''
I think she would have a hear attack if I told her that sometimes we live really dangerously and go a whole month without seeing a roast potato

Before the food police have a go, I cook really healthy meals, and we sit down to eat as a family on a regular basis,
just not always on a Sunday.

Anybody else have older parents who think this way?

We're like many other - we enjoy doing a roast, but rather than be tied down during the day, we enjoy it in the evening. DH makes the most fabulous Yorkshire puddings. If it's not a roast, then it will be something which can benefit from long slow cooking like a delicious casserole. We also do the same with our main Christmas meal and eat that in the late afternoon, thus allowing us to enjoy the daylight hours with our four dogs. Much more relaxed.

We enjoy a roast chicken dinner but certainly wouldn't have one every week and never ever at lunchtime. We always eat in the evening even on Christmas Day Etc It is actually a meal that dd loves so I usually buy the m&s rotisserie chicken when It is in a meal deal. We have it with roast potatoes, mash, carrots, bread and herd stuffing, marrowfat peas, roast parsnips and gravy. Mmm...

As there are only 3 of us there is loads left to make another dinner the next day, usually chicken and broccoli gratin or chicken and asparagus risotto etc

My grandparents always had a Sunday roast in the middle of the day and thinking about that brings back some nice memories for me. I would like our dd to have some sense of that but we live very far away from family so don't often have them here for a Sunday dinner.

Meant to say, if we have friends over for lunch on a Sunday that is about the only time we would eat our main meal in the middle of the day and even then it would be late afternoon and I would never ever cook a roast for that. Would 't even occur to me.

One time years ago when we lived in a flat here was an elderly single lady living in a bed sit downstairs and we invited her for dinner one evening thinking as she lived alone it might be nice to cook a proper roast chicken dinner. I did the works and it was very nice imo. She ate it and then afterwards commented that she thought roast dinners were very boring and she would rather have a nice hot curry that told me!

We eat a nice family meal every Sunday- it's sometimes a roast (especially in winter) and sometimes something else. But it's almost never at lunch time- for me, that takes up too much of the day (again, especially in winter when it gets dark so early) and I'm never hungry enough for a cooked meal at lunch time.

So it's either a sandwich or something for lunch then family dinner 7ish or (more often) brunch at about 10.30 (so we get a lie in) then family dinner at about 6. Perfect solution- you get a lie in, a whole day to do other things, and everyone can be fed and scrubbed etc nice and early ready for bed.

I don't understand why people think a sunday roiast is 'a lot of cooking'
Surely it is about the unfussiest meal to prepare?
Like others though we have it at teatime rather than midday

A roast isn't just hard work, it's the timing too.

Getting the meat, spuds, Yorkshires and gravy ready at the right time takes:

A. Patience
B. Culinary skill.
C. Years of practice

I have a lot of respect for all your Sunday Roast makers.

You can't really be stepping away from the kitchen getting pissed on Malbec when you're waiting for the fat to be at a smoking temperature to pour the pudding batter in, can you?

Chez Old and Co we often have takeaway on Sunday nights.

Yes to whoever said it's as time consuming to do a roast as a lasagne.

The rare times I do a roast, it tends to be more on the annandale scale of things. Love it. Easy, baked pots, leftover chicken.

Though I am sure pureists would argue that jacket potatoes are not in a traditional roast.

I never include YP as I daren't get the fat hot enough!

The tradition came about because it used to be the only non-work day of the week, plus most families could only afford meat once a week.

so - roast got put in the oven as family went to church, then veg & potatoes done after church. Leftover meat would do one or two extra meals, then the bones used for stock and soup for later in the week. Servings of meat would have been much smaller for most families.

Whatever your thoughts on the Bernard Matthews style of battery farming, he deliberately set up a business planning to make meat cheap enough that every family could afford it. Before that kind of animal rearing, meat was a rare luxury for large numbers of the population.

And whether it's a lot of work or not probably depends on the style and variety of veg. We only really like lightly boiled veg. so it's a low-effort meal. If we wanted sprouts tossed with bacon & balsamic, carrots with jus d'orange etc. then it would suddenly be far more fiddly.

I drink pale ale, or similar, whilst cooking oldlaund

Malbec deserves my full attention, so it is quaffed once the plating up is over

It does take a long time to cook.

My potatoes have been in for almost two hours and they still have a way to go. It's probably my crappy oven though. They will be worth it when they are done. I baste my potatoes every 20 minutes as well so they are extra crispy.

I don't have a dish washer, the amount of washing to do after is loads for 7 of us but dh always does them as I'm not very good at it apparently, which suits me just fine!

There is nothing hard about it in the slightest but it does take a long time and a lot of dirty pans. It can be as hard or as easy as you make it but I wouldn't want to do it weekly.

Posters moaning how every Sunday was the same food, don't you have weeks where Friday is pizza might and Saturday is curry? I'm sure there are meals you have every week yet someone a perfectly nice and non offensive Sunday roast is getting you riled.

I never have the same food every week.

Sticking up for the Roast!

Agree it isn't about time, it's about timing, and yes it's years of having done it which means I could do it without thinking.

Gosh when I do roast potatoes ( parboiled first) they only take 40 minutes.

Chicken - 1 hour 50
Roast potatoes - 15 minutes to hear the oil then 45 minutes to cook.
Parsnips - 35-40 minutes
Carrots - 35 minutes
Stuffing - 30 minutes
Yorkshires - oil to heat 15 minutes then same again to cook.

Done. Yum.

*heat nor hear though when it sizzles that is helpful.

I don't have the same food each week either, might be pizza for a few Friday's running but never the same one . My roast dinners are different each week too. I have a huge amount of veg in so the combinations are endless.

I'd go a long way for a good Sunday lunch. I'd even strip naked and offer myself up on a willow pattern platter in its honour.

Leave the roast alone!

As a vegi I rarely bother.

Yes yes Mitzy!

I remember my favourite roast out once = shame the place isn't closer (rare rib of beef and lots of it, a sort of red cabbage that was divine, loads of veg, goosefat roasties and two ginormous yorkshire puds plus homemade horseradish and gravy). It's my death row meal.

I love a roast dinner,but I have never quite understood the obsession with having it on a Sunday! If that is the only day you can get together as a family,why should one of you have to spend the best part of the the day in the kitchen? It's not just the preparation and cooking,its all the clearing up too. AndStealthPolarBear I agree with you about the hang-up some people have with regarding hot food to somehow get better and more nutritious than cold food.

be better not 'get better'.

I'd have more roasts but there aren't enough of us to eat them . Pork belly is good and I like a small chicken that I can eat up for nice sandwiches for work lunch but I long for enough people so I can do a loin of pork, leg of lamb or rib of beef.

My MIL does really nice shoulder of lamb. I never told my mum because she was always a bit sniffy about shoulder v leg and it wouldn't have been wise to praise MIL's cooking, even though they got on very well. But it's lovely.

limited, but there are so many nice ways to use up leftovers from a roast. We deliberately buy bigger joints that we can eat in one sitting so I can make meals from the leftovers midweek.
Cooked roast meat can also be frozen.

I didn't know Sunday lunches existed until I was in my late teens. deprived

I love a Sunday roast now but at dinner time. Finishing off 'Sunday' lunch now, as it's bank holiday Monday. Only do it about once a month though.

I don't always do a Sunday dinner (today where having pizza lol to be fair I'm 33 weeks pregnant and cba!) and next week kids will be at a party but I will do mid week dinners...

And when it's so nice out side
A you don't want to cook and
B enjoy the sun!

I'm with you on that!