Sunday lunch?

soappie

Nicki,

My Mum used to do Sunday roast and church all the time. The key is the prep beforehand and organisation afterwards.

Make sure all the veg is ready to cook (including potatoes peeled and in water).

Put the joint (whatever it is) on a medium heat when you leave the house. Then, if you can get back for 12:30 immediately put the potatoes on the parboil and jack the oven heat up. Once the pots are parboiled (10 minutes), you can remove the meat from the oven (if it's not cooked through then keep checking whilst the pots are doing and take it out when ready) and let it rest on the hob covered in layers of foil (it really does work believe me!)- lob the pots in the oven once they're parboiled. They should take less than an hour if you have the oven hot enough.

You can do the rest of the veg whilst the potatoes are cooking.

You can have dinner on the table for 1.30. If you plan a starter, you can have people sitting down just after 1.00pm

maman

I remember well, as a child, my mother and grandmother sitting in church and telling me they were thinking 'did I turn the oven on'?? :rotfl: We always had a full roast and were back, in those days, by 2.30pm for Sunday School. Don't remember roasties and probably the joint was much bigger than today so could be left on while we were out.

You probably could do chops or chicken portions with all the trimmings including roasts within an hour of getting home if you prepared everything before you leave.

Having been out earlier, I'm sitting here at the moment with Dauphinois potatoes in the oven (defrosted from preparing them another day) and when my timer pings I'll go and put some veg on for the last twenty minutes. I'm cheating with meat tonight as I have some tinned duck confit from France that just needs re-heating , but I could have cooked chicken portions in the time and they would have given me juices for gravy too.

Obviously casseroles work, beef in beer/red wine is a favourite. Must go, timer pinging!!

Pink.

Hi Nikki,

We too eat the Sunday roast in the evening as we have other things going on on most Sundays and I don't want to be tied to the kitchen all day.

If we are out until late afternoon I try to plan a roast that will be ready roughly when we are due home. One that survives long slow cooking eg a pot roast, pork or lamb is good incase we're delayed. I prep the veg in the morning or even the night before so it will only take about 30 mins to rest the meat and steam the veg and make the gravy when we get in. I always keep a supply of hm roast potatoes and yorkshire puddings in the freezer as they reheat much quicker than cooking from scratch.

Do you have a slow cooker? Again, if you start it early enough you could come home to a ready cooked stew, casserole, curry etc or even just a cooked chicken and pull the other bits and pieces quickly once you get home.

I know it's a Christmas dinner thread (in my opinion, Christmas dinner is basically a glorified roast), but there are lots of hints and tips on preparing it in advance on this thread that may help:

Christmas Dinner (preparing in advance)

Pink

Ms_Chocaholic

Just a quick thought, does your oven have a timer that you could set for the meat to come on whilst you are out

Alternatively, could you cook the meat the day before and have that cold but with a hot dinner

geordie_joe

Nicki wrote: »

We need to leave the house at 10.10 and get back home between 12.30 and 1.00pm, which is too short to put things in the slow cooker,

But you don't have to put the slow cooker on as you leave the house, you can put it on at 8.00am and do other things for a couple of hours.

geordie_joe

thriftlady wrote: »

In the days when I used to go to church I remember the vicar's wife telling me that they always had beans on toast for Sunday lunch;)

That's because, for them, Sunday is a work day

Nicki

geordie_joe wrote: »

But you don't have to put the slow cooker on as you leave the house, you can put it on at 8.00am and do other things for a couple of hours.

D'oh! Sometimes its the really obvious things you don't think of! Thanks for that.

Thanks also Pink winged for the great link which was exactly what I was looking for, and to soappie for reassurance that this can be done. I'm not bad on organisation so am going to try a roast with pre-cooked frozen roast potatoes and veg prepared in advance next week.

Old_Joe

When I have the oven on some other time I par roast my potatoes then freeze them so that when I need them from taking them out of the freezer to being cooked is usually about half an hour.
The joint I cook on Saturday, slice it and put in fridge, taking it out earlier Sunday morning, then as the roast potatoes are ready I warm the meat in the microwave oven.
As for veg. those are prepared earlier and start cooking them as soon as I arrive home, so that the main meal takes 30-45minutes to ready for table.

Patchwork_Quilt

You could even have a slow cooker on a timer - one of those that switches lamps on and off at certain times. Thus, everything could go in the cooker last thing on Saturday and start cooking at five in the morning while you get up just in time to go to church.

We usually have our main meal at about six on a Sunday, for the same reason.

However, if I was to use the oven timer, I'd put in some jacket potatoes with chicken pieces to roast in another dish and then have some preprepared veg in their pans ready to cook when I came home.

Jamie Oliver's meatloaf (from the 24 hr book) took the same time as the jackets did today

thriftlady_2

geordie_joe wrote: »

That's because, for them, Sunday is a work day

No, really? :rolleyes: