Easy meat recipes for a vegetarian chef

[AsanteSanaSquashBanana]

I'm a lifelong veggie - not for ethical reasons, just because the thought of eating meat makes me a bit squeamish. In my 30 something years, I've never really cooked meat, bar chucking some sausages or kievs in the air fryer for my family.

Anyway on mother's day we have both sets of parents and 2 grandparents coming for a big roast. I'd normally make a nut roast or veggie alternative, but FIL and my 90 year old granny are very traditional eaters and I'd like to make something they will enjoy too.

What can I cook that's easy and can't go wrong?! I don't really like the idea of pulling raw meat apart with my bare hands ... so I guess I'm looking for something I can just chuck on the oven / slow cooker and leave. Please send recipes or ideas my way!

I would cook a turkey or turkey crown alongside a nut roast.
Leeks in cheese sauce or cauliflower cheese, easy to make in advance.
The usual carrrots, beans peas, etc.

I would buy a couple of rotisserie chickens to add to your usual nut roast and trimmings (assume you’ll still make it for yourself).

It depends how traditional. This is a super easy and truly delicious chicken recipe, (you do need to start it the day before) but if they don’t like meat and fruit combos, no point. You can easily put in more chicken - I usually make it with just chicken thighs. You can also leave out the potatoes and cook them separately - my lot prefer mashed potato, so that’s what I make.

Roast chicken with plums, prunes and potatoes
Lovely with lots of crusty white bread to mop up the juices. Serves three to six, depending on how hungry you are.
670g Charlotte potatoes, peeled and cut into 3cm chunks
20g thyme sprigs
7cm piece ginger, peeled and grated
18 dried prunes, pitted
2 medium onions, peeled and quartered
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
75ml soy sauce
3 tbsp muscovado sugar
7 whole star anise
6 chicken legs (thigh and drumstick attached), skin lightly scored
6 large plums, pitted and quartered
Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil, add the potatoes and cook for 10 minutes, until almost done. Drain, refresh under cold water and shake dry, then transfer to a bowl and add all the remaining ingredients apart from the plums. Mix with your hands, massaging the sauce into the chicken, then cover and leave to marinate in the fridge for at least four hours, though preferably overnight.
Heat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. In a high-sided baking tray, spread out the chicken pieces skin side up, and add all the marinade, vegetables, prunes and herbs. Cover tightly with tin foil and roast for 30 minutes. Remove, discard the foil and stir in the plums, basting the chicken as you do so; roast for a further 40-45 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has reduced to about 200ml. Leave to rest and cool for five minutes before serving.

As a veggie, I've poked an onion and a lemon up a chicken's bum, brushed it with butter and bunged it in the oven easily enough before. Not sure how many that would feed and presumably the timings depend on the weight, but people enjoyed it (and ate it, more tellingly). It's easy and not too gruesome.

Just roast a whole chicken/crown/some chicken thighs in the oven along with the nut roast and serve with the same sides. Lemon, garlic, and thyme (and salt and pepper of course) for flavouring the chicken. Super easy.

The roast in the bag chickens come out very nicely. You only need to touch it to quickly remove the bag near the end of cooking, and to carve, and presumably someone else can do that.

Or if you don't mind briefly touching the raw meat, you could do any ready to roast joint to be honest. Beef silverside, pork shoulder, leg of lamb. You don't need to flavour them if you don't want to, but they are slightly nicer if you rub oil salt and pepper on, plus optional mustard (beef) or rosemary and garlic (lamb). Just plonk the joint in a roasting tray and cook it for the time advised on the packaging.

ETA actually maybe avoid pork if you think people might "expect" crackling, as that's a bit more hands on.

Traditional doesn't mean meat with every meal though. Or do they think it's not a meal without meat?

I disagree wth all the recommendations to go with a roast chicken. Roasting a chicken is not as easy as people seem to think it is, and a LOT depends on your oven so there's an element of trial and error. it is very very easy to overcook chicken or, even more common, to overcook the breast and undercook the legs! It's one of those things that once you master it, absolutely IS easy. But there's trial and error usually before each person gets their roast chicken right.

Is cost an issue? if not, I'd go with a rib of beef. The reason being that it's astonishingly forgiving but looks impressive - so if you have a 2 rib beef joint, if you slightly undercook it - no biggie, you jst have more rare bits in the middle, and the opposite if you slightly over cook it.

Option two would be a slow cooked piece of lamb. There are 10000 recipes for slow cooked lamb shoulder (much fattier - might really puit you off?) or leg (leaner) and most simply involve sticking some seasoning on, adding some liquid, covering and sticking in the oven for anything from 2.5 hours to 8!

I'd fancy up a Toad In The Hole. A really big, billowing Yorkshire with lots of gravy. Everybody likes a good Yorkshire pudding cooked in a roasting dish with sizzly sausages from the very best butchers.

No bother with cooking timings, no a' gawpin' an' a gippin' all over the kitchen for the poor chef who has to handle bones and carcass an' a' whatnot.

Most people come for the carbs anyway and if you are sure in your batter, a big tin of Yorkshire would go down a treat.

Good luck! (And add a bit of watter to yer batter before ovening it. Makes it lighter.)

I’ve been a vegetarian for over 45 years and I never cook meat or fish. People coming to my house know this and accept it. It won’t hurt anyone to eat a vegetarian meal on Mother’s Day. Do you really want the cooking smells of meat in your house? You say it makes you feel squeamish. You have offered to cook for everyone - they should accept your preference. Do a nut roast or a wellington with all the trimmings.

I've never pulled raw meat apart with my bare hands when cooking a roast! I just pop the joint in a baking tray (with liquid/covered with foil if necessary) and bung it in the oven.

I am lifelong veggie as brought up that way.
occasionally I have wanted to serve something roasted for others alongside veggie options - tended to go for something from the ready to cook range at the supermarket, ie shove in oven and do little else.

otherwise I can do sausage based stuff, sausage casserole, toad in the hole etc that is very easy and doesn’t involve meat handling, prep etc.

Slow cooker lamb shoulder is genuinely foolproof and would be perfect for this situation. Rub the joint with olive oil, crushed garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper, then cook on low for 8 hours. It falls apart completely and you don't have to worry about undercooking it — there's huge margin for error.

The gravy practically makes itself from the cooking juices, just reduce it in a pan with a little flour. It looks genuinely impressive on a table even though the work involved is minimal, and it photographs beautifully too which is always a bonus if you're the sort who likes to document family occasions. Really hard to go wrong with it as your first meat main for a big group.

Get some decent cumberland sausage wheels or good sausages.

Serve with mash, gravy, veg (joney roast carrots and cauliflower cheese) and yorkshire puddings.

Elderly adults, children and all dietary requirements can be catered for.

Serve a bloody good pud afterwards for and complainers. Apple crumble and custard?