10 Weird Things People Actually Eat With Their Roast Dinner

I’m from Yorkshire, and I believe we do roast dinners right. I mean, the most famous roast dinner side dish hails from my home county, so I must be correct in my musings.

However, even here in the White Rose county, tucked away in otherwise perfectly respectable suburbs, people are serving up some rather unique, shall we say, accompaniments with their roast beef.

Some I can understand. Some I might even be persuaded to try. The most questionable are an abomination if you ask me, but there is, after all, no accounting for taste.

We keep things fairly simple in my house. A selection of seasonal vegetables, the obligatory cauliflower cheese, proper roast potatoes and, of course, Yorkshire puddings. There should be plenty of gravy, preferably enough to require a slight lip around the edge of the plate, and nobody should be counting how many roasties you’ve taken.

The only addition to our Sunday dinner that some people might find odd – although I maintain is absolutely correct – is raw onion bathed in vinegar.

And that’s exactly where we’re starting our list of ten weird things people have with their roast dinner.

1. Raw Onions in Vinegar

Before anyone starts, this is not weird. I don’t care what the rest of the country says.

Thinly sliced raw onions soaked in malt vinegar are absolutely delicious alongside roast beef. They’re sharp, crunchy and acidic, cutting beautifully through rich beef, gravy and Yorkshire puddings.

This was completely normal in my world growing up, to the point that I didn’t realise other people didn’t have a little dish of vinegary onions on the table with Sunday lunch.

Apparently, however, plenty of people consider them an unusual roast dinner accompaniment.

They’re wrong.

2. Baked Beans

Now we have crossed a line.

There are people in Britain who put baked beans on a roast dinner.

Not next to leftover roast potatoes on Monday. Not as part of some questionable fridge-clear-out meal. On the actual Sunday roast, with gravy.

Beans.

The tomato sauce mingling with the gravy is the part I struggle with most. Both are perfectly respectable sauces in their own environment, but they do not need introducing.

Some people swear by it, particularly with sausages or roast chicken. I remain unconvinced.

3. Tomato Ketchup

I understand ketchup with chips. I understand ketchup with a bacon sandwich. I will even overlook it alongside certain pies.

But lovingly roast a joint of beef, make proper gravy from the meat juices, crisp your potatoes to perfection and then squirt tomato ketchup across the whole thing?

Absolutely not.

And yet ketchup on a roast is surprisingly common, particularly among people who have been doing it since childhood and refuse to give it up.

Nostalgia is powerful. Apparently powerful enough to override gravy.

4. Salad Cream

This one raises more questions than it answers.

Salad cream has a very specific place in British food history. Cold ham? Fine. A retro salad involving iceberg lettuce and half a boiled egg? Absolutely. A cheese sandwich? I’ll allow it.

Roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, potatoes and gravy?

No.

Nevertheless, there are households where the salad cream bottle makes its way onto the Sunday dinner table every week. The vinegary tang arguably does the same job as horseradish or my beloved onions in vinegar, so perhaps there is some culinary logic buried in there somewhere.

I’m still not pouring it on my roast.

5. Pickled Beetroot

I can actually see the argument here.

Pickled beetroot provides sweetness, acidity and earthiness, all of which can work rather well with rich roasted meat. It is particularly good with cold leftover beef, so putting it alongside the hot Sunday dinner isn’t an enormous leap.

The problem is what happens next.

One rogue piece of beetroot and suddenly the gravy is pink, the potatoes are pink and the bottom of your Yorkshire pudding looks like it has been involved in an unfortunate incident.

Taste-wise? Surprisingly defensible.

Aesthetically? Chaos.

6. Macaroni Cheese

This one feels deeply wrong to my Yorkshire sensibilities, but macaroni cheese alongside a roast isn’t quite as ridiculous as it initially sounds.

After all, we happily serve cauliflower cheese – essentially vegetables covered in a rich cheese sauce – so replacing the cauliflower with pasta isn’t a million miles away.

Except it is.

Because now you’ve got roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and pasta on one plate. That’s an extraordinary commitment to carbohydrates, even by Sunday lunch standards.

Would I eat it? Of course I would.

Do I think it belongs there? Absolutely not.

7. Chips

There is always someone who wants chips.

A roast dinner already contains potatoes in their greatest possible form. Crispy on the outside, fluffy in the middle, preferably roasted in beef dripping or goose fat and capable of absorbing an unreasonable amount of gravy.

And somebody looks at that plate and thinks: Needs chips.

What are the chips bringing to proceedings that roast potatoes haven’t already handled?

Worse still, gravy inevitably gets involved and suddenly you’ve created a hybrid between Sunday dinner and chips-and-gravy from the takeaway.

I love both. I simply don’t need them simultaneously.

8. Coleslaw

Cold coleslaw beside a piping-hot roast dinner is another combination people genuinely love.

Again, I can almost understand the mechanics. Crunchy cabbage, creamy dressing and a little acidity can work beautifully alongside roasted meat. We happily serve slaw with pulled pork and barbecued meat, after all.

But there’s something unsettling about a spoonful of mayonnaise-based coleslaw slowly warming up beside a pool of hot gravy.

It’s the temperature clash I can’t get past.

Keep it for the barbecue.

9. Mushy Peas

This might be controversial because we’re heading into another great northern institution.

I adore mushy peas. With fish and chips, a pie or a hot pork sandwich, they are magnificent.

But with a traditional roast dinner?

Some households absolutely insist upon them, particularly alongside roast beef. And unlike some of the more outrageous additions on this list, I can see why. They’re savoury, comforting and excellent with gravy.

It’s just that once mushy peas arrive on the plate, Sunday lunch begins drifting dangerously close to pie-and-peas territory.

I’d eat every mouthful, but I’m still calling it unusual.

10. Mayonnaise

And finally, we arrive at the one I cannot defend.

Mayonnaise.

On a roast dinner.

Cold mayonnaise sitting beside hot gravy. Mayonnaise touching Yorkshire pudding. Mayonnaise potentially finding its way onto a roast potato that has done absolutely nothing to deserve such treatment.

I know there will be people reading this who have done it their entire lives and think nothing of it.

Those people are entitled to their opinion.

They are also wrong.

So, What Actually Belongs on a Roast Dinner?

The beauty of a roast dinner is that almost every British family has its own version of what is “normal”.

For me, it’s beautifully roasted meat, crisp roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, seasonal vegetables, cauliflower cheese and plenty of proper gravy. If we’re having beef, there will probably be horseradish somewhere on the table too.

And, naturally, a bowl of raw onions swimming in vinegar.

Perhaps that’s the real point. The strange additions we recoil at are somebody else’s childhood Sunday dinner. They’re the things their mum put on the table, their grandparents always served or they’ve eaten every Sunday for the past 30 years.

Food traditions don’t necessarily have to make sense.

Although if you’re putting mayonnaise and gravy on the same plate, I reserve the right to judge you.

Joanne Brook-Smith is a writer and editor with two decades of publishing experience. She launched Crave Magazine during the Covid period to create a fresh, inspiring space for food, travel and lifestyle content.

Crave Magazine – inspiring modern lifestyles across the UK and beyond.