Can You Eat Turkey At Easter?

Some meals have their time and place – turkey at Christmas, fish on Good Friday, pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and parkin on Bonfire night. However, with Easter just around the corner, can you buck the custom of eating lamb for roast dinner and have turkey instead?

We have been enjoying lamb on Easter Sunday since the beginning of time. In fact, it was a tradition in early Passover celebrations before Jesus Christ was even born, never mind Christianity.

To avoid being affected by the plagues that swept over Egypt, Jews sacrificed lambs and painted their blood on to the front doors. This is why they came to commemorate the festival of Passover – when God ‘passed over’ their houses – by eating lamb.

After Jesus was born, died, and was then later resurrected and Christianity came about, many Jews who converted to the new religion brought this tradition with them, Metro newspaper revealed.

There are other explanations why we enjoy lamb at Easter, including Jesus being known as the ‘Lamb of God’. After he sacrificed himself, it seems fitting that Christians eat lamb, which was also sacrificed, to remember him coming back to life.

It is amazing to think the custom of eating lamb on Easter Sunday has lasted longer than Christianity itself, but while millions of people still celebrate the religious festival around the world, many certainly don’t mind updating their choice of dinner for the occasion.

For a start, those who want to eat more sustainably should wait a bit longer to tuck into a roast leg of lamb, as eating British lamb at Easter is out of season. To get it on the table by March or April, it would have had to be fed on grain, fattened up and reared indoors.

Diners who would prefer to eat grass-fed lambs have to contend with the fact their dinner travelled all the way from New Zealand to taste good on Easter Sunday. This is just one compelling reason to choose something different on eat this Easter.

Net Mums recommends choosing turkey instead, giving parents a simple but tasty recipe to follow if they want to serve poultry to their little ones after they have indulged in lots of chocolate eggs.

Yes, turkey is most associated with Christmas Day dinner, or Thanksgiving if you are American, but it is a good choice of roast for any occasion.

Though turkeys are prepared for eating during the wintertime, they are often frozen for those who want to enjoy them later in the year. Therefore, it is easy to get your hands on a turkey crown or whole bird if you want to replicate your Christmas Day dinner on April 17^th this year.

Another alternative to easting roast lamb on Easter Sunday is making a spring chicken pot pie; a cavolo nero, mushroom, potato and fontina strudel; bay-crumbed salmon with creamed spinach and wild mushrooms; roasted stuffed squash with herby pistachio salsa; or chorizo-stuffed pork loin with braised beans, as recommended by BBC Good Food.

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