Sunday dinner/lunch- is it a thing?

[AlertCat]

Whether you do a roast or something else, is the main Sunday meal something a bit special in your home, or a pretty ordinary rotation?

IABU= ordinary meal that you might have any day of the week
IANBU= a slightly special meal or something you don’t have in the week

Yes, we usually have something nice on a Sunday and tend to eat earlier so it’s a late lunch/early tea. Usually a roast but sometimes steak, lasagne, chilli, etc. Though it’s not completely unheard of to just make a macaroni and eat it on the couch 😂

Either brunch around 11am and then an early-ish roast maybe around 6.30pm, or a later roast around 2pm and then a very light dinner (like, something on toast, or cheese and biscuits).

I do stretch the definition of a "roast" sometimes, but generally it's something with at least two different vegetables in addition to the carbohydrate portion. And i try to make enough to stretch to two different meals in the week eg strip the chicken to add to a salad for lunch on Monday, and make stock for soup using up the rest of any veg on Tuesday kind of thing.

We both work FT and have a toddler so weekends are the only time we get to spend quality time as a family, Saturdays are always hectic and tends to be our day for going out and about. Sundays are more chilled usually so we always make the effort to eat together in the early evening. It’s always scratch cooking, sometimes it’s a roast, others it’s lasagne, toad in the hole, spaghetti bolognese, fajitas, today was curry. Sometimes we have a nice pudding after and it’s such a treat. It’s our day for getting DC to try new things, sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t!

We often have a roast through the winter, in the summer it varies more

We usually take the dogs for a walk which ends at the pub, where we have a roast.

If either of us are working, we fend for ourselves. Today I had olives, vegetable samosas, and some cheese…

Sunday for us is a roast/pie/casserole in winter and a bbq in the summer.

DS is usually out with friends so we don’t do anything special food wise and tend to fend for ourselves. I microwaved some leftover rice dish for my lunch and DH made himself a sandwich. I’ll pick at stuff from the fridge for dinner, if I can be bothered. 🤷🏻‍♀️

We don’t really ever eat any meals altogether apart from on Christmas day. Even during the week, I cook for DS but he’ll eat on his own as he prefers that and I eat a bit later.

I always loved the sound of a Sunday roast lunch, and had friends growing up whose families did it, but it wasn’t a thing for us - my mum isn’t from the UK. Have sometimes thought about trying to start it as a tradition. Is it a lot of work? I know these will sound like dumb questions to those who are used to it, but how long does it take? Apart from a roast chicken or side of beef etc, what side dishes and condiments do you have? I’ve only ever had roast dinners at Christmas really, so I tend to think of it as a very special thing that takes a lot of prep.

I know I am the only one but Sunday in front of lunch/dinner annoys me. Yes, I know it’s sad.

My mum does it all the time. ‘Do you want to come over for Sunday lunch?’.

Why not ‘do you want to come over for lunch on Sunday?’ Or ‘do you want to come over for a roast on Sunday?’.

If she asks about coming over for lunch on Saturday she would never say ‘Saturday lunch’.

Why is it Sunday that only gets this treatment?!

Roasts/big meals can be eaten on any other day of the week so it doesn’t need to be Sunday specific. If I know I’m going to someone’s house at the weekend it’s generally for more than a sandwhich. If I’m not sure I would ask ‘what are we having?’.

I know. Please send me many grips

We never have lunch on Sunday. Some form of late morning brunch, usually — avocado toast, or pancakes or poached eggs.

Never anything special. Definitely not a roast.

Sunday roast every Sunday with my DP and DD. My brother often invites himself, his wife and their two DD so the house is madness on a Sunday afternoon and we love it 😀

We’ve moved abroad but still always do a Sunday roast. When visitors from the UK ask if we’d like them to bring anything then it’s Bisto and Paxo stuffing. In the summer we usually do a bbq instead.

Always had a special Sunday meal. Both grew up with it at lunchtime but our normal routine is main meal for tea, and evening service isn't really a thing nowadays, so we keep to that for Sunday as well.

Left to ourselves we would alternate traditional roast with fish or steak or similar; but atm Sunday is when we host S2 and fiance neither of whom is a big fish fan, so we stick to the more meat-based ones.

We tend to cook a traditional Sunday roast dinner about 1-2 times a month, but when not having roast dinner, we always make the effort to cook something a bit nicer than what we would normally have during the week at the weekends.

I used to cook a roast for my husband every Sunday without fail but probably only do a roast twice a month now. If we’re having roast chicken then I’ll eat some of it, but I couldn’t eat roast beef, lamb, or roast potatoes if my life depended on it. If I’m not cooking a roast then I tend to cook something a bit more special than we would have during the week as it’s the only day I don’t ever work.

It’s actually not that much work. My fave is a slow roast lamb (shoulder or leg), you brown the meat on the hob, then add an onion (in two halves), lots of garlic, a carrot (I snap mine in two) and a big bunch of rosemary. Salt and pepper. Put the lamb on top of these with its skin at the top, pour in some wine or water, cover with foil and cook for many hours at a low temperature like gas 2.

Then the veg gets cooked the hour before you want to eat, you take the meat out and turn the oven up high to cook your roast potatoes and obviously green veg only takes a few minutes. It’s a meal that’s quite suited to pottering and just doing a bit of cooking now and then through the day or the two-three hours before you eat, depending what joint of meat you are using. And I always do mine for 6pm rather than lunchtime because otherwise it would feel a bit hectic.

Roast chicken similar to the lamb- I cook it on top of an onion to flavour and colour the gravy, and with herby, garlicky butter under the skin and herbs in the tin too- but gas 5 for less time (something like 20 minutes per pound plus 20 minutes, not sure of the metric because my mum taught me that one but they put it on the label in a supermarket).

Delia Smith, Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver all offer decent recipes for doing a roast. Delia breaks down the timings for a roast in her Winter Cookery book (published in the 90s, was gifted to me when I started uni!) but may also do so in her Complete Cookery Course book. She also teaches how to make gravy (again, not nearly as hard as you think until you do it).

We always have a special meal on Sundays at about 7pm. In the winter months a traditional roast or a casserole. In the summer more often salmon, a barbecue, or roast chicken with new potatoes, salad and a home made slaw.

We almost always have a roast on a Sunday in the winter months and in the summer months it’s either a bbq or roast chicken and salad.

last week we had a Chinese as it was DD2s birthday and that’s what she wanted but that was unusual.

Some weeks, but not every. Maybe once or twice a month (though more often dinner than lunch). I’d much rather be out doing things that cooking lunch for 3 hours. So we tend to do a roast or a special Sunday meal (a big BBQ, for example) on the days when nothing else is happening. Often on a really rainy day when we’d be stuck at home anyway. It’s more of a time filler than anything.

Usually something more traditional on a Sunday a casserole, cottage pie or homemade pie. A roast a couple of times a month, sometimes with all the trimmings, sometimes more simple.

Thanks @AlertCat - my mouth is watering! 😁

It can be as much or as little work as you want it to be IMO. To me the only key ingredients are all the family assembled around the table and enjoying themselves, pretty much everything else is optional.

Obviously most people would do some form of whole joint of meat or whole bird as the main element and a large joint can take a little longer to cook than the average meal, plus part of the joy is cooking more meat than you need so as to have leftovers, so it is best suited to a day like Sunday where you're at home for most of the day and can keep an eye on the oven and potter about in between cooking, it's not a meal for if you're in and out of the house all day and have hungry kids needing to be fed as soon as you walk in the door. But I wouldn't say it's a huge amount of effort unless you want it to be, most meats just need to be seasoned then put into the oven at the right temp for the right amount of time, roast potatoes take an hour to cook (plus time to peel and chop although auntie Bessy's cheat ready prepared ones are good too) but most of that time they're just sat in the oven, you only need to do one veg if you're tight on time and it can be something like peas that cook quickly and easily, gravy can be ready made or from granules. Obviously people do get much more elaborate with it than that particularly on special occasions and do lots of different kinds of veg, homemade Yorkshire puds, fancy gravy and sauces, a homemade from scratch dessert etc etc but none of that is vital, I like how each family forms their own version of the essential elements over time but all based around the classic 'roast' core...

We tend to make something on a Sunday that takes a bit longer to cook because we usually have a bit more time than we do in the week. Today we had a vegetable lasagne but we also have roasts or oad in the hole.

Always on a Sunday. Roast during winter, barbecues during summer. Probably the only meal of the week when we all sit down together.