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

FAQs

What is the traditional menu for Easter? ›

What's a traditional Easter menu include? The main dish for an Easter meal varies, but some typical dishes include honey-baked ham, pot roast, pork chops, and fish. Some popular side dishes include scalloped or mashed potatoes, spring vegetables, and dinner rolls.

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.

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.

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 ...

Lamb, eggs, rabbits, bells: What food portrays. The Easter meal, which follows the religious ceremony, is often eaten at midday, bringing the long fast of Lent to an end with a series of rich and sweet dishes. Lamb, which commemorates Jesus' sacrifice, is often served as the main course, as a leg, roast or stew.

Ham, chicken, hard boiled eggs, sweet potatos, butter potatos, pickled eggs, green beans casserole, pies, cakes, home made pickled carrots, cucumbers, and peppers, cake, tarts, and sweetened beans as well as homemade cholocate fudge and hard candy.

What kind of ham is best for Easter dinner? Look for a fully-cooked, bone-in ham that isn't spiral cut—it stays juicier in the oven! Shank-end hams are the big, beautiful ones you're used to seeing for the holidays and those work great here.

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.

What can't you eat during Easter? ›

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.

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

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.

Christians celebrate Easter with some traditional foods but seem to have more regional and family favorites rather than religiously dictated foods. Ham is often served at the Easter table, which may seem odd since Jesus was Jewish and wouldn't have eaten pork.

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.

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.

On Good Friday, it's tradition to eat fish rather than meat. According to Christians, Jesus sacrificed his flesh on what is now known as Good Friday. This is why traditionally, people abstain from meaty flesh on Good Friday.

You can always stick to the traditional side dishes such as green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, or mashed potatoes, or you can mix up the Easter menu and bring some showstoppers that everyone will be raving about!