Sunday dinner
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Sunday roast consisting of roast beef, mashed potatoes, other vegetables and Yorkshire pudding

The Sunday roast is a traditional British main meal served on Sundays (usually in the early afternoon for lunch), consisting of roasted meat, roast potatoes together with accompaniments, such as vegetables and gravy.

It is popular throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland . Other names for this meal are Sunday dinner, Sunday lunch, Sunday Tea, Roast dinner, and Sunday joint, joint being a word that specifically refers to the joint of meat. The traditional Sunday roast has been traced back to Yorkshire, England during the Industrial Revolution^{citation needed}. It is believed this 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. The meal is often comparable to a less grand version of a traditional Christmas dinner in these cultures.

Sunday roasts are also common (though less so in recent times) in other Commonwealth countries such as New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Australia. In Australia, roasts feature on the menus of most cafes and restaurants. Jigg's dinner is a variation found in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Typical elements

Typical meats used for a Sunday roast are beef, chicken, lamb or pork, although seasonally duck, goose, gammon, turkey or (rarely) other game birds may be used¹.

Recently, vegetarian alternatives such as Quorn or nut roast have also become available.

Common traditional accompaniments to each meats include:

• roast beef — served with Yorkshire pudding; and English mustard, or Horseradish sauce as accompaniments.
• roast pork — served with crackling and sage and onion stuffing; apple sauce and English mustard as accompaniments.
• roast lamb — mint sauce or redcurrant jelly as an accompaniment.
• roast chicken — served with pigs in blankets, sausages and stuffing, bread sauce, or redcurrant jelly².

Sunday roasts can be served with a range of boiled and roasted vegetables. The vegetables served vary seasonally and regionally, but will usually include roast potatoes, roasted in meat dripping or (more recently, due to the perceived unhealthy nature of saturated fats) vegetable oil, and also gravy made from juices released by the roasting meat, perhaps supplemented by one or more stock cubes, thickened with some sort of roux, or corn flour.

Other vegetable dishes served with roast dinner can include mashed swede or turnip, roast parsnip, boiled or steamed cabbage, broccoli, green beans and boiled carrots and peas. It is also not uncommon for leftover prepared vegetable dishes — such as cauliflower cheese and stewed red cabbage — to be served alongside the more usual assortment of plainly-cooked seasonal vegetables.

In Australia, roast pumpkin is almost universally served. In New Zealand, kūmara is similarly popular.

It takes a considerable amount of domestic cooking skill, flair and experience to have all the elements, with their separate cooking and preparation methods and timings, ready together to serve at their best, especially to a large gathering.

Left-over food from the Sunday roast has traditionally formed the basis of meals served on other days of the week. For example, meats might be used as sandwich fillings, lamb might be used in the filling for a Shepherd's pie, and vegetables might form the basis for bubble and squeak.

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 grub and Carvery

British 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.^{citation needed} This usage is based on a modern interpretation of the words roast or grill to mean a barrage of difficult questions.

References