**tl;dr:Roast dinners are a plate full of unseasoned, unappetising slop that should have stayed in the 17th century.** In the age of seasonings from paprika to chilli, why are us brits still choosing to make our ‘greatest’ classic dish that of a pile of stodgy mush? Roast dinners constitute of boiled veg and meat with little flavour and only taste the slightest bit appetising coated in mountains of watery gravy and yet the whole of the British population almost faints with excitement upon eating one. Even the best cooked roast dinners cannot escape the boring nature of merely being a plate of plain meat and veg. In turn, I have never understood the excitement surrounding a roast dinner. Food should be exciting and flavoursome, yet we chose to eat a bland plate of boiled veg and meat every Sunday.

**TL;DR Roast dinners are tasty and also brilliantly versatile, ensuring that the dish is never boring or repetitive.** The roast dinner is a wonderful, versatile dish that is never boring. Each household does their roast differently and even if the same household makes a roast each week, it is always different. Roast dinners take on a variety of different forms, using different meat, vegetables, gravy and additional supplements each time. The roast has the unique ability to be perfectly suited for a normal family dinner, or for special events such as Christmas (in the UK a traditional turkey roast is eaten on Christmas Day) due to its versatility. On top of all this, roast dinners *actually* do taste good – or at least they do according to the general British public. A [YouGov poll](https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/food/popularity/british-dishes/all) of the most popular dishes in the UK identifies that half of the items in the top 10 come from the iconic roast dinner dish. With its continued popularity, the dish certainly does taste good to many – me included.

I would have to blame the cook for this opinion. A roast dinner is flexible with different meats and vegetables and more importantly it is enjoyable if cooked properly.

**TL; DR- I do love roast dinners, but they are definitely overrated; they're more effort to make than they're worth, and at the end of the day they are just a bunch of medieval-style vegetables and a piece of meat on a plate.** I have made a roast dinner exactly twice in my life, and they both turned out surprisingly okay. But for all the time and effort and ingredients they took, I don't think I'll be making many more for myself. I'm sure lots of people have the same experience: you're in the middle of a roast dinner and think 'I could have made something much nicer than this in fifteen minutes'. The roast is one of the classic 'do you really like it, or have you just been told that you should like it, and you're now lying to yourself' dishes. Like Greggs and Colin the Caterpillar cakes, the roast dinner is only so widely venerated across Britain because it's traditional, because 'everyone' likes it. If the roast dinner was a new Instagram trend, and wasn't traditional, it would probably be very short-lived and wouldn't fly like it does now. Every roast looks the same anyway, no matter how special and well-cooked the roast is, it still consists of pretty much the same ingredients and is by no stretch of the imagination an exciting and versatile dish. If you order it at a pub, there won't be any surprises and you'll know exactly what your dinner is going to look like. A spoonful of cranberry sauce on your roast would probably be the most shocking surprise. The hype surrounding roast potatoes is understandable, but that's about it. However comforting it may be, the roast dinner is not worthy of all the love and praise it gets.

**Roast dinners are varied and their flaws worth overlooking** Roast dinners are amorphous. It could be anything from beef to nut; with carrots, peas, parsnips, roast potato, turnip, mash, yorkshires, stuffing, brussels or broccoli. It exists in many forms, too. A good home made roast is the top tier of the roasted pyramid; a pub roast in the middle, and the circa 2006 school roast at the bottom when ranked on taste alone. Free school meals are a good thing, so it's hard to denigrate the school roast. The beauty of the meal is its versatility. In a family of picky eaters, no one is left dissatisfied. I leave you with this: the most harrowing experience I had in my (brief) time working at a club was the cleanup of an entire regurgitated roast dinner. It was as if someone had upended a full, unmasticated Wetherspoons roast onto the dance floor. It was hideous. There were whole roast potatoes. What should be gleaned from this is that portion control is key: it's a meal of many parts and in the thick of it it can be hard to gauge how much you're eating. A good roast dinner should be quality over quantity, enjoyed slowly with a considerable settling period post consumption. It's easy to think that something is overrated if you haven't experienced it at its best: it is entirely worth the effort.