Build the Perfect Easter Menu With These 80 Festive Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is a traditional Easter dinner menu? ›

Glazed ham or juicy lamb, old-fashioned casseroles, deviled eggs, and special desserts — the Easter feast is when we love to recreate traditional family recipes passed down through generations to savor all over again.

Lamb is a popular main dish on Easter in the U.S. and throughout Europe, such as the roast lamb common in the U.K. and Greece, or the French gigot d'agneau pascal, a rich, slow-cooked lamb stew often served with spring vegetables.

An Easter ham is a classic, and we've got 5+ solid recipes for you to try (including one in made easy on a sheet pan). If you're looking to branch out, check out our recipes for other meaty holiday showstoppers, like braised lamb shank, pork loin roast, and beef wellington.

Traditionally, the baskets are filled with: decorated hardboiled eggs (representing Christ's Resurrection); lamb-shaped butter or sugar (representing Christ as the “Lamb of God”); bread (reminding us that Jesus is the “Bread of Life”); meats, such as ham (symbolic of great joy and abundance), sausage (symbolic of God's ...

Local experts believe that Jesus ate simple meals of bread and locally caught fish. Aside from simple meals of bread and locally caught fish, local experts believe that Jesus also ate olives. Local experts believe that Jesus drank wine with his meals.

According to the USCCB, you shouldn't eat meat from chickens, cows, sheep, ham, pigs, or birds. It's also common practice to avoid alcohol, sweets and desserts, and fast foods made from chicken and beef.

Simnel cake was traditionally given by servant girls to their mothers when they returned home on Mothering Sunday and it's now become a classic Easter cake.

Traditional dishes include ham, which is often served with sweet potatoes, green beans, and deviled eggs. Hot cross buns, a sweet, sliced bread with a cross on top, are also a traditional Easter treat. Other sweet treats include chocolate eggs, bunnies, and jelly beans.

Not only were hogs cheaper to raise than sheep, but the farmers could slaughter the hogs in the fall and let the meat cure throughout the cold winter months. By spring, the cured meat was ready to eat—just in time to prepare for the Easter feast. The best part of the holiday ham may just be the leftovers.

Can you eat meat on Easter Sunday? Yes. Easter is a day of celebration, and with Lent over, Christians can eat meat. However, some still abstain from certain foods, like red meat, depending on their religious practices and personal beliefs.

What do Italians eat on Easter? ›

One of the most famous Italian easter foods is torta pasqualina, a savory pie filled with greens, cheese, and hard-boiled eggs. Across central and southern Italy, you'll find another popular dish, pizza rustica – a rich pie filled with eggs, small bits of cured meats, and cheeses.

Favorites include Capirotada (Mexican Bread Pudding), Chile Relleno, Baja Fish Tacos, Camarones A La Diabla, and Crockpot Lentil Soup.

Whether you're hosting family or friends this Easter Sunday, you're going to need a few special dinner ideas: an impressive main like ham or lamb, plenty of crowd-pleasing sides and, of course, some fun and festive desserts.

Under current law, the only days that Catholics are required to abstain from meat are Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays in Lent (which already includes Good Friday). That leaves 6 out of every 7 days that chicken can be eaten.

The tradition of eating ham on Easter is deeply rooted in the agricultural calendar. Before the advent of modern refrigeration, pigs were often slaughtered in the fall, and the meat was preserved through the winter months using salt and smoke.

Lamb is the traditional centrepiece of a Greek Easter feast. In villages, it will be a whole lamb — or two — turning on a spit, basted with red wine and oregano throughout the day.