This week’s Sunday dinner ideas start with soup, bread and wine – food for the soul for these challenging times. I also have more ideas, from chicken breast recipes for those of you who learnt to keep the freezer stocked during the pandemic, to recipes for fish and chips and curry and rice, and Russian-Ukrainian food, which is what I’m cooking tonight.
One of my best Sunday dinner ideas for you tonight is to put a big pot of soup on the stove and invite family, friends or neighbours over for dinner. Ask them to bring baguettes and wine – lots of wine – and perhaps have someone bring dessert. Chicken soup for the soul. That’s what we need to comfort us during these very challenging times.
If you’re lucky to be living in a place without war, floods and the plague then I have some good Sunday dinner ideas for you to cook tonight too, from fish and chips to curry and rice, which are also very comforting, of course. Or how about this mushroom noodle soup with hand-cut noodles or Spanish meatballs for albondigas with this potato tortilla?
I’d love to know what you think of our Sunday dinner recipes. Last week I spontaneously shared some Sunday night dinner suggestions and the post proved so popular I decided to share more Sunday night dinner ideas today – dishes to cook tonight based on what I’m considering cooking, having poked around in the fridge and freezer this morning. Should we turn this into a weekly series? Please let us know.
Before I tell you about my ideas for Sunday dinner, 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 Sunday dinner recipe ideas for dishes to cook tonight.
Sunday Dinner Ideas Starting with Soup, Bread and Wine – Food for The Soul for Challenging Times
Chicken Soup Recipes
If you’re looking for recipes for chicken soup for the soul – because few things comfort more like a big bowl of chicken soup and we all need comfort right now – then look no further than this collection of our best chicken soup recipes.
One of my best Sunday dinner ideas for you is to put on a big pot of chicken soup and invite your family, friends or neighbours around for dinner. Ask some to bring baguettes, others to bring wine, perhaps someone to bring dessert. Soup, bread and wine, that’s all we need to comfort us during these challenging times.
If you don’t find anything there that appeals, we have a compilation of warming winter soups if you’re in the southern hemisphere, chilled cold soups if you’re in the northern hemisphere, and noodle soup recipes that are fantastic any time of year.
Best Chicken Soup Recipes – Chicken Noodle Soups, Spicy Chicken Soups, Chicken Rice Soups and More
Chicken Breast Recipes
Another of my best Sunday dinner ideas – something with chicken breasts. Because if you’re like us, you’ve probably got a freezer full of chicken breasts – and chicken thighs, and chicken mince, and ground pork, and ground beef – because if there’s one thing we all learnt from the pandemic it was to always be prepared.
While frozen chicken thighs and minced meats will inspire countless Sunday dinner ideas – from curries and chillies to meatballs and pasta sauces – frozen chicken breasts are easily as versatile, and can be served super-casual or make a fancy meal if you feel like something a bit special for dinner on Sunday night.
Chicken breasts will not only make you two of my favourite home-cooked comfort food meals – chicken schnitzel and chicken Stroganoff – but they also make chicken Kiev, which is an excellent choice for a more elegant meal, and this chicken schnitzel burger, which Terence created last week.
Shredded chicken breast or pulled chicken can also be used in chicken congees, chicken noodle soups, chicken salads, and chicken tacos and burritos. Better take them out of the freezer now! Our best Sunday chicken dinner ideas below.
Best Chicken Breast Recipes – Chicken Schnitzel, Chicken Stroganoff, Chicken Kiev and More
Fish and Chips Recipe
Fish and chips is another of my Sunday dinner ideas for you, as it was our go-to Sunday night summer-time takeaway meal after a day on the beach for Terence and I when we lived in Sydney years ago.
Whether you’re in Australia experiencing the last days of summer – which in many parts of Australia, including Terence’s home-town Brisbane, are very wet days – or you’re here in northern Southeast Asia where we’re enjoying glorious cooler-than-usual end-of-winter weather, fish and chips for dinner is always a good idea.
Terence’s beer battered fish and chips recipe makes perfect crunchy battered fish and crispy chips. This classic takeaway dinner is such an iconic dish for Australians and our New Zealand and British friends, we often make this when we’re homesick, nostalgic or just missing meals by the sea.
Use this recipe (link below) along with our hand cut potato chips recipe and easy homemade tartare sauce recipe and you’ll be tucking into the best fish and chips ever, and be taken back to balmy beachside dinners. Serve your fish and chips on newspaper or butcher’s paper or your backyard picnic table – as long as it’s not under water, of course. Stay dry down there!
Best Beer Battered Fish and Chips Recipe for Perfect Fish and Chips
Best Curry Recipes
Curry and rice is another one of my best Sunday dinner ideas for you. Curry and rice are rarely eaten alone here in northern Southeast Asia, where a curry is one dish of several that accompany rice for a shared meal eaten family-style.
Other dishes would typically include a soup, some stir-fried greens, and perhaps something grilled or barbecued and each person takes a little of each dish that they eat with a big mound of rice. Rice is the central component of the dish, not the curry or other dishes.
Even so, when we’re not in the mood to cook up a feast and looking for something simple, a rich spicy curry which we’ll spoon onto a big bowl of rice is one of my guilty pleasures. Guilty, because I know it’s not the proper way of eating here – but it’s so good we’ll make twice as much so we have leftovers the next day.
We have loads of curry recipes in the collection below – Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, you name it – and next week we’ll be adding a Japanese curry recipe.
Russian-Ukrainian Recipes
It was with a heavy heart that I shared my mushroom noodle soup recipe for a Russian vegetarian soup made with hand-cut pasta called lapsha this week (link above). I had originally written an introduction about Russian pasta making traditions and cosmopolitan Odessa, established by Catherine the Great, which was home to many communities from Europe and Asian, including Italians.
I adjusted the intro as Russian president Vladimir Putin’s forces were arriving in the Ukraine capital, Kyiv, in armoured vehicles and tanks, having invaded the country the previous day. Many of the city’s residents were about to spend a second night in bomb shelters and subway stations, from which they would emerge to a very different reality.
My Russian grandparents were born in the country we now know as Ukraine in the early 1900s when it was part of the Russian Empire. As a child I grew up hearing stories around the dining table about Odessa, Kyiv, the Crimea and Black Sea. My heart breaks for the people of Ukraine, whose ancestors like my own lived through revolutions and wars, who I’m sure never thought they’d have to go through this again.
I’ll be digging into my archive of family recipes tonight and cooking dishes of the Russian-Ukrainian repertoire, such as my baboushka’s borscht, this classic garden salad, perhaps some cabbage rolls and maybe even this beef Stroganoff or mushroom Stroganoff. I’m not up for dessert tonight, but you could browse these pancake recipes.
If you want to help the people of Ukraine, the best thing to do for now is to donate funds to established international non-governmental organisations such as the Ukrainian Red Cross, Save the Children and UNHCR, which are working with Ukrainian authorities to provide emergency cash and other assistance to Ukrainians. I’ll share more ways to help Ukrainians over coming days.
Authentic Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from a Saint Petersburg Palace Kitchen
Please do let us know if you’ve made any of our Sunday dinner ideas recipes in the comments below as we’d love to get your feedback and hear how our recipes turned out for you.
