Traditional Easter Sunday Dinner Ideas

For the latest few years, our family has celebrated an Easter dinner featuring a lot of Italian foods. Some, like the homemade ravioli, are from Tony’s side of the family. Others, like the artichokes and Columba cake, are recent additions I’ve added as I’ve become inspired from the town we live in now. And some like the lamb and cannoli we adopted years ago simply because they sounded delicious. While I believe the kids could take or leave the artichokes, and at least a couple aren’t a huge fan of lamb, there’s little I would change, though I’m always looking for inspiration to improve things. This year, I stumbled across a red Russian Paskha (or pashonitsa)mold on Amazon, and so I’m adding that to the mix but it ultimately sent me down a rabbit hole of researching other traditional Easter dinner foods. I know how I grew up celebrating Easter dinner, and what we eat now, but I wanted to share some Easter Sunday dinner ideas I found from all around the world to hopefully inspire you to try something new. Affiliate links below.

Easter dinner, and traditional Easter foods, are a HUGE part of celebrating Easter.

Easter is the celebration of the resurection of Jesus Christ. Christians believe that after his crucifixtion on Good Friday, He rose from the dead on Sunday. It is the most important feast of the entire liturgical year. (Yes, even above Christmas!) Catholics fast for the 40 days leading up to Easter so it’s no surprise that a huge dinner featuring meat, eggs, dairy, and sweets, all things traditionally given up during Lent, feature prominently on the menu! Many foods have religious symbolism, like lamb represents Jesus as the lamb of God whose sacrifice takes away all of mankind’s sins. So while Easter baskets and the Easter bunny get a lot of press these days, celebrating Easter with a large dinner is definitely the traditional way to go!

Many people today who do not practice Christianity still celebrate Easter, and attribute many of the same symbols to spring and renewal only. You can say what you want, but many of these traditional foods came about as ways to celebrate the breaking of the Lenten fast. Can they be tied to spring and earlier pagan celebrations? Certainly, but Christians definitely took the same foods and made them their own to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. And some foods, like lamb, were already prominent in Jewish traditions like Passover.

Traditional Easter Dinner Ideas from Europe

When looking at Easter menus across Europe, you see a lot of similarities: roasted lamb, spring vegetables like artichokes, asparagus, and new potatoes, eggs, and specialty breads and cakes.

Italy

• Roast Lamb
• Roasted Artichokes
• Colomba di Pasqua – A dove shaped Easter cake. Use this recipe or buy online!

Poland

• Bia?a Kielbasa or White Sausage
• Sour Rye Soup
• Babka – A fluffy bread like cake you can make or buy.

Traditionally, many of these foods are placed in a basket and blessed before Easter.

Germany

• Baked Ham
• Warm Potato Salad
• White Asparagus – More mild than green asparagus and served a variety of ways.

Spain

• Bacalao al pil-pil – Salted cod in sauce.
• La Mona de Pascua – Specially decorated cake.
• Torrijas – A Spanish version of French toast.

France

• Pâté Berrichon – Ground pork, veal and whole eggs wrapped in puff pastry and baked.
• Tarte à la Baeckeoffe – A type of meat pie. (Recipe in French.)
• Alsatian Lamb Cake

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Orthodox Easter Dinner Ideas

There are many different Orthodox branches of Christianity spanning many parts of Europe and Asia. All use the Julian calendar (not the Gregorian calendar the Catholic Church uses) when figuring out the date of Easter. That means many years, Orthodox Easter falls after Easter on the regular calendar. We’ll all celebrate the same Easter date together again in 2028!

Greece

• Roasted Goat (or Lamb)
• Pastitsio – Baked Pasta with Meat and Béchamel Sauce
• Red-Dyed Eggs

Russia

• Paskha – A no-bake cheesecake-like dessert.
• Kulich – A tall, sweet bread you can make or buy!
• Salmon Coulibiac (a.k.a. Kulebyaka) – Salmon and rice wrapped in dough.

Serbia

• Prebranac – Baked white beans and caramelized onions
• Vaskršnja Poga?a – Easter Bread
• Gibanica – Cheese pie

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Traditional Easter Dinner Ideas from Latin America

You can see how Europeans influenced some foods in Latin America, especially Spain and Portugal, while other dishes have ties to Africa.

Mexico

• Capirotada – A type of bread pudding.
• Revoltijo – Patties formed from a jumble of ingredients served in a mole sauce.
• Coctel de Pulpo – An octopus cocktail (!!!)

Brazil

• Bacalhau – Salted Cod
• Caruru – Okra cooked with dried shrimp and spices.
• Ovos de Páscoa – Oversized chocolate eggs.

Peru

• Chupe de Camarones – Shrimp chowder
• Chiriuchu – I don’t even know how to describe this, but you eat it cold and it contains guinea pig.
• Ocopa – A sauce featuring chili and mint that is traditionally served over potatoes with hard boiled eggs.

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Traditional American Easter Dinner Dishes

America is a big country, so it makes sense that the foods I ate for Easter in Lancaster County, PA would be different from those eaten in the South or New England states. Obviously, each region’s cuisine will be influenced by the immigrants who settled in each area, in additional to dishes that feature local and seasonal food. Coastal areas will feature seafood, and warmer southern states will have access to more early spring vegetable than those states bordering Canada. It’s hard to say all American’s eat *these* Easter foods. So here are just some broad categories.

• Ham – There’s several ways to roast and glaze.
• Deviled Eggs – Probably the most popular way to use up all those dyed eggs.
• Vegetable casseroles – While these will vary by region, America seems to have a passion for coating our vegetables with cheese and/ or creamed soups.
• Potatoes – Usually scalloped or in some casserole. Mashed potatoes are usually served alongside meats featuring a rich gravy, like turkey.
• Bread – Either sweet or savory, most Easter tables feature bread often influenced by one of the many cultures mentioned above, or that explodes out of a can.

I hope you enjoyed this brief overview of traditional Easter dinner ideas from around the world. Let me know in the comments where you’re from, what you’re eating for dinner and any local or cultural dishes you’re planning to feature as part of your Easter dinner!