Your Sunday Roast Is a Week of Lunches in Disguise

If you roast a chicken, a joint of pork, or a leg of lamb on Sunday, you have already done most of the hard work for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The trick is not to treat the leftovers as a sad repeat of the same meal, but as an ingredient. Cold roast meat is the backbone of some of the cheapest, fastest, most satisfying lunches you can make — and it costs you almost nothing beyond what you have already spent.

Start by stripping the meat from the bones within a couple of hours of eating, while it is still cool enough to handle comfortably. Keep the meat in a sealed container in the fridge — it will be good for three days, or you can freeze it in portions for up to three months. Then, and this is the bit people skip, keep the carcass or bone. A stock pot is the single best value item in a British kitchen.

Wraps That Hold Together and Don't Go Soggy

The classic mistake with a leftover wrap is building it too far in advance and finding a puddle of dressing by noon. Fix that with order of assembly. Dressing goes on first, right across the middle of the wrap, then a barrier of crisp leaves or shredded cabbage, then the meat on top. Roll tightly, wrap in baking paper, and you have a lunch that travels beautifully.

• Chicken: shredded cabbage, grated carrot, mint, and a spoon of yoghurt whisked with lemon and a pinch of cumin.
• Lamb: quick-pickled red onion, rocket, and tahini thinned with lemon and water.
• Beef: horseradish stirred into crème fraîche, watercress, and a few thin slices of raw onion.
• Pork: apple grated into yoghurt with mustard, plus fennel or celery sliced paper-thin.

Flatbreads, chapatis, or even a large lettuce leaf will do the job if you have no tortillas. Warm them for ten seconds in a dry frying pan and they fold without cracking.

Soups Built from a Carcass and a Bag of Odds and Ends

Cover the bones with cold water, add an onion, a carrot, a bay leaf, and a few peppercorns, then simmer gently for two to three hours. Do not boil it hard — a rolling boil makes the stock cloudy. Strain it, and you have a base that tastes far better than anything from a cube.

To turn that into lunch, add a handful of pearl barley or red lentils and simmer until tender, then stir in shredded leftover meat and any cooked vegetables from the roast at the very end so they do not disintegrate. Season, taste, and add a squeeze of lemon. Freeze in single portions — flat freezer bags stack neatly and thaw in minutes under a hot tap.

If you have a tray of roasted root vegetables left over, blitz them with stock and a splash of milk or cream for a thick, sweet soup. A spoon of curry powder or a pinch of nutmeg before blending lifts it out of the ordinary.

Grain Bowls: The Thriftiest All-Rounder

Cook a big batch of grains once a week — pearl barley, brown rice, bulgur wheat, or quinoa — and keep it in the fridge. A grain bowl is then a five-minute assembly job, and it is the best way to use up the last scrap of meat.

The formula is simple: a base of grains, a portion of protein, something crunchy, something sharp, and a generous dressing. Cold barley with shredded lamb, roasted carrots, pickled onion, and a yoghurt dressing is a proper lunch. So is rice with shredded chicken, cucumber, spring onion, and a soy-and-sesame dressing. Cooked grains keep for four days in the fridge and freeze well in portions.

Grow the Fresh Bits on a Windowsill

You do not need a garden to keep lunches lively. A south-facing windowsill will give you cut-and-come-again salad leaves — rocket, mizuna, mustard, and baby leaf — from a shallow seed tray. Sow a small pinch every two to three weeks so you always have a fresh crop coming, and cut with scissors about 3cm above the compost. You will usually get two or three cuts from each sowing.

Herbs are just as obliging. Parsley, chives, mint, and coriander all manage in pots indoors, though mint is best kept in its own pot because it spreads. Radishes and spring onions will grow in a deep pot of compost, and pea shoots sown thickly on damp kitchen paper give you a crunchy garnish within a fortnight. Even in a small flat, one tray of leaves and one pot of herbs transform a lunch.

Quick Pickles and a Two-Minute Dressing

Nothing wakes up cold roast meat like something sharp and vinegary. Keep a jar of quick pickles in the fridge at all times and you will never find leftovers dull again. They also make excellent use of a glut of onions or cucumbers.

• Pickled red onion: slice one onion thinly, pack into a jar, and pour over 100ml cider vinegar, 100ml water, one teaspoon of sugar, and one teaspoon of salt. Ready in 30 minutes and keeps for three weeks.
• Quick cucumber pickle: thin slices of cucumber with rice vinegar, a pinch of sugar, and a little salt. Best eaten within a week.
• Everyday dressing: three tablespoons of yoghurt, one of lemon juice, a teaspoon of mustard, salt, and pepper. Or shake three parts olive or rapeseed oil with one part vinegar in a jam jar.

Make a jar of dressing on Sunday and it will see you through the week. Between the roast, the stock, the grains, the windowsill leaves, and a jar of pickles, you have a fortnight of lunches that cost pennies, taste bright, and never feel like leftovers at all.