Sunday best
Sunday Lunch remains one of the nation's best loved traditions - every week millions of families sit down together to eat roast meat served with roast potatoes, vegetables and gravy.
Increasingly, the venue for the Sunday lunch is the pub rather than the home for many families.
At The Publican Food and Drink Awards next month, the winner of the coveted Sunday Lunch of the Year title will be announced, awarded by The Publican in partnership with Maggi.
So where did it all start? The traditional Sunday roast can be traced back to medieval times. On Sundays, after the morning church service, serfs would assemble in a field and practice archery and other battle techniques - just in case the King called on the lord of the manor to raise an army.
Once practice was over, the whole village would eat an ox roasted on a spit, washed down with mugs of ale - an early example of beer and food matching.
The meat was put on to roast before church, and is what has kept the Sunday lunch tradition alive despite centuries of social change.
Today more than one in five pub meals, 22 per cent, are eaten on a Sunday, with a roast the top choice.
With consumers watching the pennies, its worth remembering that a Sunday lunch can be bought at the local for little more than it would cost to prepare at home. A pub can also earn a reputation for good food from its Sunday lunch offer.
The perfect gravy
When it comes to creating that all-important Sunday roast, there is one very special ingredient we all have an opinion on - gravy. We all have preferences for consistency, taste, and volume on the plate.
Steve Oram, development chef, at Nestlé Professional, says: "A bad gravy makes a great Sunday lunch a bad experience.
"I personally like my gravy thick and bursting with flavour, so I make it using the meat tray to absorb all the juices. You can achieve the perfect gravy by using Maggi Gravy as a base. Once you have measured it out for the right number of portions, pour it into the pan that you have been roasting the joint in. This allows you to add as many flavours as possible.
"Then add any small trimmings of meat to the pan, such as off-cuts of beef or, if you've cooked a leg of lamb, add in the bone and boil it up and serve. Then you can either pour the gravy through a sieve or leave the bits in, depending on your liking."
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