The Sunday roast is the meal people living alone tend to give up first. It looks like a family job: a joint that feeds six, a tray of potatoes, three pans of veg and a gravy boat. Buy a chicken for one and you’re eating chicken until Thursday.
You don’t need the joint, though. You need something good in the middle of the plate, and everything round it scales down to one tin and a pan.
Can you do a roast dinner for one?
Yes. Swap the joint for one piece of meat that cooks in the time the potatoes take: a gammon steak, a duck breast, a turkey breast steak or a couple of chicken thighs. The potatoes and veg roast in one tin while the meat goes in a frying pan at the end, and the gravy is made in that same pan.
The honey and mustard glazed gammon is the easiest place to start: a gammon steak, a parsnip, new potatoes and sprouts, in 40 minutes, for about £3.10.
How many roast potatoes for one?
One large floury potato, about 250g, cut into chunks. That’s what the Christmas dinner for one uses, and it’s plenty, unless roast potatoes are the point of the day, in which case nobody’s stopping you having two. Use a Maris Piper or King Edward and give them room in the tin, or they steam instead of crisping.
What can go in the middle?
- Glazed gammon steak with roast parsnips and sprouts, 40 minutes.
- Duck breast with orange and port sauce and spiced red cabbage, 40 minutes. The red cabbage is the bit people remember.
- Turkey breast steak with pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, carrot, parsnip and gravy, about 70 minutes. It’s the Christmas one, and it’s just as good in February.
- Mushroom, chestnut and cranberry Wellington if you don’t eat meat, an hour.
What about Yorkshire puddings?
Buy frozen. A batter for one is fiddly and a bag of frozen Yorkshires keeps for months, so you can have two with every roast and nobody needs to know. The same goes for a jar of horseradish or a tub of goose fat: they keep, so they’re fine to buy for one.
What do you do with the leftover veg?
The roast leaves most of a bag of sprouts and a few parsnips. Monday is bubble and squeak with crispy bacon and a fried egg, which takes the sprouts and any spare potato. Midweek, bangers and colcannon with onion gravy is the nearest thing to a roast on a Wednesday, in about half an hour.
The button below puts five of these into the planner on one shopping list: the gammon, the bangers, the bubble and squeak, the duck and the Wellington. Move them to the days that suit you.
A roast on your own is still a roast. Warm the plate.
Neil