These hearty Sunday dinner ideas include everything from an authentic creamy beef Stroganoff to comforting beef curries and warming beef stews. We’ve got meaty recipes for a Spanish rabo de toro oxtail stew recipe from Jerez in Southern Spain, a richly-spiced Thai Massaman beef curry from Southern Thailand, and an easy beef kofta recipe for mouthwatering Lebanese kafta.
This compilation of hearty Sunday dinner ideas is the latest edition of our fairly random series of best Sunday night dinner ideas. If you can’t find anything you want to make tonight from the meaty recipes below, then browse our Grantourismo recipe archives where we have many hundreds of recipes filed.
Now before I tell you all about our hearty Sunday dinner ideas, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve cooked our recipes and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee. Or you could buy us a coffee and we’ll use our coffee money to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing.
Another option is to use links on our site to buy travel insurance, rent a car or campervan or motorhome, book accommodation, or book a tour on Klook or Get Your Guide. Or buy something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers, James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, travel books to inspire wanderlust, and gifts for Asian food lovers and picnic lovers. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay any extra.
Lastly, you could browse our Grantourismo store for gifts for food lovers, including food themed reusable cloth face masks designed with Terence’s images. Now let me tell you all about these hearty Sunday dinner ideas.
Hearty Sunday Dinner Ideas from Beef Stroganoff to Beef Stews and Beef Curries
Our hearty Sunday dinner ideas include beef Stroganoff, a beef curry, beef kofta and beef stews.
Beef Stroganoff Recipe
My authentic beef Stroganoff recipe makes another of my takes on a family recipe – this time, the deliciously rich and creamy braised beef and mushroom dish invented in the pink Stroganov Palace in St Petersburg – and it’s my top pick of this week’s hearty Sunday dinner ideas for you.
I often wonder what the Stroganov family might have thought if a fortune teller had told them their beef Stroganoff recipe would travel the world with Russian-Ukrainian refugees like my grandparents, Ewfrosia and Ivan, being cooked and eaten everywhere from China and Hong Kong to Australia and the Americas, before becoming a retro classic of the 1970s, revitalised in the 2020s.
I like to serve my beef Stroganoff as it was originally served with shoestring fries, although I also adore it with Terence’s creamy mashed potatoes. A Russian garden salad. I’ve got more Stroganoff recipes here for you, including chicken Stroganoff, meatball Stroganoff and vegetarian mushroom Stroganoff. I’m posting a pork Stroganoff recipe next week.
Authentic Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from a Saint Petersburg Palace Kitchen
Traditional Irish Beef Stew Recipe
This is the best Irish stew recipe for a deeply flavoured classic Irish stew with a rich gravy thanks to an easy roux – and half a bottle of Shiraz. Dishes don’t get more Irish than this traditional Irish stew, considered by many to be Ireland’s national dish.
While Terence is the one with Irish ancestry in this little family and Irish stews were part of his mother’s repertoire, I took on Irish stew duties last year for Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day, as I grew up eating and later cooking Russian-Ukrainian stews so I have a thing about stews.
If you’re a stew lover, you’re going to love this Irish stew recipe. It makes an incredibly rich Irish stew that’s deeply flavoured thanks to slow-cooking, that half a bottle of Shiraz, and an easy roux – melted butter and flour whisked with the stew juices to create a flavourful gravy that’s stirred into the stew. A roux is an essential component of a classic Irish stew, and indeed many stews.
Best Irish Stew Recipe for a Deeply Flavoured Traditional Irish Beef Stew
Spanish Rabo de Toro Oxtail Stew Recipe
Our rabo de toro oxtail stew recipe from Jerez in Southern Spain is a classic slow braised dish that requires a long cooking time, but rewards with rich, robust flavours, and it makes another of our hearty Sunday dinner ideas.
If you want something to snack on while the rabo de toro is stewing, you should be able to find something in our collection of best Spanish tapas recipes, which includes recipes for the Spanish meatballs called albondigas, chorizo and potato croquettes, classic garlic shrimp or gambas al ajillo, and a Spanish chorizo in red wine recipe for chorizo al vino tinto.
But back to our oxtail stew recipe – we found that in many recipes Spanish chorizo (spicy sausage) was added to the rabo de toro, but in Terence’s opinion, if you’re doing it right, the dish needs no such unnecessary complication of flavours.
Terence has found the best way to cook this dish is in a Dutch Oven as the wide base and heat retention promotes even cooking. If you want to make a version in a pressure cooker, just half the time and test to make sure the oxtail is fall-apart cooked.
Rabo de Toro Oxtail Stew Recipe from Jerez in Southern Spain
Traditional Irish Beef and Guinness Stew Recipe with Cheese Dumplings
This traditional Irish beef and Guinness stew recipe with cheese dumplings delivers a hearty beef stew made with Ireland’s beloved stout beer, with meat so tender you can pull it apart with a spoon and fork.
It also includes a recipe within a recipe for savoury cheddar cheese dumplings that cook with the stew. Though you could serve it with mash or greens if you prefer.
If you enjoy stouts, those strong, top-fermented, dark brown beers that are so dark that they’re practically black, you’ll love this. Historically, any stout could be used to cook Irish beef stews, so by all means use your favourite stout if you have some fancy local craft-brewed stuff.
But Guinness is Irish, so there’s that, and it’s a reliably good dark beer, with a lovely tang and creamy barley flavour that is perfect for this stew.
Traditional Irish Beef and Guinness Stew Recipe with Cheese Dumplings
Thai Beef Massaman Curry Recipe
A Thai Massaman beef curry is our favourite kind of Thai curry. It’s the earthiness of Southern Thailand’s beef Massaman curry that makes this the most moreish of all curries. While the prep list is long and the cooking time requires the patience of a saint, it’s by far the most rewarding curry to make.
You’ll also see lamb and chicken Massaman curries, though never pork, as this is a Thai Muslim curry, but Terence prefers making the slow-cooked beef version. It’s one of the best curry recipes as far as we’re concerned and another of our hearty Sunday dinner ideas for you.
This recipe by chef Ian Kittichai from his Issaya Siamese Club cookbook is one of Terence’s favourite lamb versions as he uses lamb shanks, but sadly we can’t source lamb here in Cambodia, so beef Massaman it is.
Authentic Beef Massaman Curry Recipe – How to Make this Rich Complex Southern Thailand Curry
Irish Beef and Guinness Pie Recipe with Potato Mash
Our Irish beef and Guinness pie recipe with potato mash will make you delicious little meat pies made in ramekins. I created this recipe last year to use up leftover Irish stew and mashed potatoes from Saint Patrick’s Day.
This recipe will make you four addictive mini meat pies made in ramekins. We used a store-bought puff pastry block that was already divided into 10 portions of layered sheets, which worked out perfectly for four mini ramekin pies.
One sheet was used to create the pie base and sides, another sheet was used for the pie lid and the off-cuts of the round pie lids was used to fill gaps if the first pieces didn’t quite reach the rims of the ramekins.
Irish Beef and Guinness Pie Recipe with Potato Mash for Mini Meat Pies Made in Ramekins
Beef Kofta Recipe for Classic Lebanese Kafta
Our easy beef kofta recipe will make you the mouthwatering Lebanese kafta of the kind that we used to eat when we lived in the Middle East. Arabic restaurants were on every corner in the United Arab Emirates, our home for almost eight years, and we’d tuck into the food a few times a week.
Cooked at home, served at restaurants, and barbecued in parks at family gatherings on weekends and holidays, these Arabic minced meat kebabs are one of the most beloved dishes in a region that loves its grilled meats and another of our hearty Sunday dinner ideas.
Terence and I’d be on our evening stroll when we’d get a whiff of the smoky aromas of grilled meats wafting our way. On our walk home, we’d buy a bottle of red and drop into our favourite Arabic restaurant to order take-away: hummus, baba ganoush, fattoush, tabbouleh, and a mixed grill with lamb kebabs, shish tawouk (garlicky chicken) and beef kofta.
Beef Kofta Recipe for Lebanese Kafta – Grilled Spiced Ground Meat Kebabs
Traditional Russian Beef Stew Recipe for Solyanka
This traditional Russian beef stew recipe makes solyanka, a quintessential beef stew or heavy beef soup with potatoes and carrots that’s a little sour, a little sweet, and was a whole lot saltier back in its day. It’s the last of our hearty Sunday dinner ideas.
As regular readers know, my heritage on my mum’s side is Russian-Ukrainian and I created this recipe based on my memories of my grandmother’s stew and it turned out to be just the way I remembered it.
During research for my cookbook based on my family recipes, I found a mention of the dish dating to the 15th century, so solyanka is a medieval dish made for modern times: invented to use leftovers, it’s a one-pot dish that is filling and comforting.
One of our best stew recipes, we recommending serving it with a Russian garden salad, slices of black rye bread or sourdough, and don’t even think about washing it down with anything but vodka.
Traditional Russian Beef Stew Recipe for Solyanka, a Medieval Dish for Modern Times
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make any of our hearty Sunday dinner ideas as we love to hear how our recipes turn out for you.
