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Super Suppers Sunday Roast
Super Suppers Sunday Roast
| Sunday Roast |
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 Everyone knows the Brits love eating fish and chips every Friday, and who can blame them? Fish and chips are awesome! But what do they eat the rest of the week? I mean, aside from deep-fried Mars bars and spotted dick? Well, the truth is that during the week the English pretty much sustain themselves on a steady diet of straight booze. Cups of Irish whiskey, pints of Newcastle, and whatever else one happens to consume during a full-scale pub crawl are all part of the typical Englishmen’s weekly diet. However, there is one exception. On Sunday the English clean up their acts, sober up the best they can, and sit down to a good old fashioned Sunday roast. Sunday roast is a traditional British meal that, as the name suggests, is served on Sunday. The main ingredients of any Sunday roast worthy of being called by the name are roasted meat and potatoes. Common side-dishes to the meal include Yorkshire pudding, roasted vegetables, stuffing and gravy. Although Sunday roast sounds like a nice supper, the Brits usually eat it for lunch, and it’s often referred to as “Sunday lunch,” “Sunday tea,” “Roast Dinner” and “Sunday joint.” Personally, I think the name “Sunday joint” sounds like the name of a hip-hop video countdown on MTV, but that’s just me. The meat used to prepare Sunday Roast is usually beef, chicken, lamb or pork. However, during certain seasons, duck, goose, gammon and turkey may also be used. Roasted vegetables used as sides often include swede (also known as rutabaga), turnips, roasted parsnip (kind of like a carrot), cabbage, broccoli, green beans, carrots and peas. If the Brits have any leftovers from the week (O.K., maybe they live on more than just booze, but the Muffin Man is still a lush) they often finish them off by serving them with the Sunday roast. Such leftover can include thing like cauliflower cheese and stewed red cabbage. Although Sunday roast might sound like a fairly easy dish to prepare, it actually takes quite a bit of skill to have all the various elements ready at to eat at the same time. Folks over in England seem to be a bit undecided about exactly where and when Sunday roast came to be. Some people think in dates back to the Industrial Revolution and Yorkshire, England. It’s that for some reason on Sundays all the bakers in Yorkshire couldn’t bake bread in their oven, so they used them to roast meat instead. Others believe the tradition of eating Sunday roast goes all the way back to Medieval times, when squires would feed their serfs a nice Sunday roast in return for all their hard work during the week. |