Traditional Sunday Roast of the UK.

Q: Welcome to show, Andrew. Could you first introduce yourself to our listeners?

A: Hello everybody, I would just like to introduce myself and say my name is Andrew Jackson, and I was born in the Northwest of England in a city called Lancaster. However, I’ve currently been living in Vietnam for over 16 years now, so I’m pretty much Vietnamese, having spent half of my adulthood here.

Q: Thank you for joining us today, Andrew. I was told that eating a large meal following church services is common to all of the continent of Europe.  On Sundays, all types of meat and dairy produce are allowed to be eaten, unlike on Fridays when many Roman Catholics and Anglicans traditionally abstain from eating meat, and so eat fish instead. And a special meal was created to celebrate the return to eating meat. Can you tell us more about that tradition?

A: One of my favourite meal in England, that is the Sunday roast. For many people, the Sunday roast is just a time for all of the family to get together and share a really big and happy meal. Traditionally it was eaten after church, that’s kind of the origin of the Sunday roast, where people and families got together following the church and then have their weekly feast.

Q: Sounds like a sacred yet casual meal for all family members. Tell us more about the ingredients of a modern Sunday Roast.

A: Now, I want to talk to you about the components and the wonderful different foods that are in the Sunday roast. So of course we have meat, and that can be typically roasted beef, roasted pork, roasted lamb, or something like that. Typically with beef we have gravy, with pork maybe apple sauce, and with lamb we have mint sauce. I personally prefer roasted potato, but you can have roasted potato, mashed potato, new potato with the meat, and also lots of vegetable, specifically root vegetables such as brussels sprouts, carrots, and things like that. They are typically the main components of a Sunday roast.

Q: My mouth is watering. It sounds delicious. What other side dishes often accompany a Sunday Roast?

A: One of my favorite part of a Sunday roast is something called a Yorkshire Pudding. I like to eat at least 2 or 3 Yorkshire Pudding with my Sunday roast, fill them full of gravy. Otherwise, there are no other real components other than the sauce. It just one big plate of food. Certainly, following this meal, even though it’s very large, there will never be any leftover because everyone will finish and polish that plate as we say with the Northern England.

Q: So do we have to wait until Sunday to treat ourselves to a Sunday Roast? The dish sounds too delicious to wait for until the weekend. Could we have Sunday Roast every day in the UK?

A: What may strike you as peculiar is although it’s called Sunday roast, you can actually have Sunday roast in any day of the week. Monday all the way through to Saturday, and of course on Sunday. All restaurants and pubs within the UK have Sunday roast as an option, and it’s a very popular meal. Some places you go to will do Sunday roast all day to keep everybody happy. So that’s just a little bit about a traditional meal in England.

Q: Thank you, Andrew, for sharing with us a beautiful UK tradition of delicious food.