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These traditional Easter dinner ideas are sure to make your family Easter dinner a big success. You can’t go wrong with any of these tried-and-true classics. A traditional Easter dinner includes ham, side dishes, salads, and, of course, desserts.
As an added bonus, check out our sample Easter menu plan below (including recipes).
Traditional Easter Dinner
Every year our family gathers together on Easter Sunday to enjoy a traditional ham dinner. On the side, we serve a potato dish, a hot vegetable, and hot homemade rolls. We have our traditional menu plan below, or you can mix and match the recipes below to create your own special Easter dinner.
Easter Appetizers
As family and friends start to gather, we like to set out an appetizer or two. We’ve handpicked four fantastic recipes to elevate your Easter gathering.
Easter Main Dish Recipes
According to marthastewart.com, ham became the meat of choice for Easter dinner because it was more readily available than lamb. However, if ham isn’t your main dish of choice, a roast lamb, pork roast, or a roast beef can also be served for your Easter feast.
As mentioned above, our go-to Easter main-dish is ham. However, we have enjoyed other main dishes as well. If you are looking for a less traditional Easter meal, try one of these recipes using chicken, fish, beef, or pork.
Easter Side Dishes
Hot Potato Side Dishes
You can’t serve a ham dinner without a good hot potato side dish. Typically Easter potatoes are served “casserole-style” in a casserole dish with some kind of sauce and cheese. Some examples of this are funeral potatoes or potatoes au gratin. Our readers have commented saying that they have loved serving our creamy potatoes with peas or our parmesan crusted potato halves with their ham dinners as well. Check them all out and decide for yourself what suits your family best! Any of these Easter dinner ideas will be a winner!
Hot Vegetable Side Dishes
A hot vegetable side dish adds variety, color, and nutrition to an Easter dinner spread. Choose a hot vegetable that will complement the other side dishes on your Easter menu.
Easter Salads
The possibilities are endless when it comes to Easter salads. It’s fun to incorporate hard boiled eggs and spring flavors, like strawberry and lemon. We find ourselves using the following salads time and time again.
Easter Breads
Nothing quite compares to the aroma and taste of freshly baked bread. Homemade rolls are always a good idea. Make extra so you can have ham sandwiches for leftovers! Our classic Easter bread also looks beautiful on the table.
Easter Desserts
When it comes to Easter Desserts and Treats, we don’t mess around. In fact, we love Easter desserts and treats so much, we created an entire, separate post dedicated to them. These tasty treats can be served along with Easter dinner or even as surprises in Easter baskets. They are as fun to make as they are to eat! We featured our Chessmen Banana Pudding with our menu plan below. Here are a few more of our favorites.
Cakes
Pies
Bars and Cookies
Bonus: Leftover Ham Recipes
I don’t know about you, but we ALWAYS seem to have leftovers from Easter dinner. Here are some ideas to help you use up that delicious leftover ham:
Easy Easter Dinner Menu with Recipes
Here is a sample menu plan for a delicious and easy traditional Easter dinner. It features Slow Cooker Ham, Cheesy Potato Casserole, Sautéed Sweet Asparagus, and a Chessman Banana Pudding for dessert. See the recipe notes for tips on timing it all out perfectly. We are taking all of the stress out of it just for you! Please enjoy your beautiful, well-planned Easter dinner!
How to Make a Traditional Easter Dinner
Traditional Easter Dinner Menu
Video
Ingredients
Slow Cooker Spiral Ham
- 8 pound spiral- cut ham (cooked)
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2/3 cup maple syrup
- 1 cup canned pineapple juice (do not use fresh)
Cheesy Potato Casserole
- 2 pounds hash browns shredded or cubed
- 3 teaspoons salt
- pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup butter melted
- 10 ounces condensed cream of chicken soup
- 2 cups sour cream
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 cups corn flakes (optional)
- 2 tablespoons butter (optional)
- 1 1/2 cups shredded cheese (optional)
Sweet Asparagus
- 2-3 pounds asparagus
- 6 tablespoons butter
- 4 tablespoons sugar
Four Layer Banana Pudding
- 2 bags Pepperidge Farms Chessman Cookies
- 6 bananas sliced
- 2 cups milk
- 5 ounces instant vanilla pudding
- 8 ounces cream cheese
- 14 ounces sweetened condensed milk
- 12 ounces frozen whipped topping thawed
Instructions
Slow Cooker Spiral Ham
- Remove the ham from packaging and place ham, flat-side down, in a large slow cooker (7 quarts or larger).
- Generously rub brown sugar all over the ham.
- Pour maple syrup and pineapple juice over the ham.
- Place lid on slow cooker and cook for 2-3 hours on low heat.
- 30 minutes prior to serving, remove lid and spoon the juices over the ham. Cover and cook for 30 more minutes.
- Remove ham from slow cooker and serve.
Cheesy Potato Casserole
- Mix all ingredients, except optional toppings, in a large bowl. Spread mixture evenly into a 9×13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
- Optional toppings: Corn flake crumb topping: BEFORE baking Sprinkle corn flake crumbs over casserole. Drizzle 2 tablespoons of melted better over the corn flake crumbs. Bake.Melted cheese topping: Prepare casserole and bake for 50 minutes. Remove casserole from oven and evenly disperse 1 ½ cups of shredded cheese over the casserole. Return the casserole to the oven and bake for 10 more minutes.
Sautéed Sweet Asparagus
- Rinse asparagus. Snap off the bottoms of each stalk and discard the bottoms.
- Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add asparagus to the skillet and sprinkle sugar over the stalks.
- Sauté asparagus over medium-high for 5-7 minutes or to your preferred doneness. Serve immediately.
Four Layer Banana Pudding
- Line the bottom of a 9×13 pan with one layer of Chessmen cookies.
- Place sliced bananas on top of the cookie layer.
- In a large bowl, combine milk and pudding mix. Stir until smooth. Set aside.
- In a separate bowl, combine cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk. Stir until smooth. Fold in whipped topping.
- Add the two mixtures together and stir until well combined. Pour mixture over the banana layer.
- Top with another layer of Chessmen cookies (the picture side up) and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Notes
- Prepare the Four Layer Banana Pudding. This can be made the morning of, or the day ahead. It can also be made just after starting the Slow Cooker Ham and still have time to refrigerate so it can be served nice and cold.
- Prepare the Slow Cooker Ham and take a break for an hour. Set the table, clean the kitchen, or watch a show on Netflix. 🙂
- After the ham has been cooking for about an hour, prepare the Cheesy Potato Casserole. Once it’s in the oven, you can take another 45 minute break. If you are making a green salad or other sides, now is a good time to do it.
- At this point the ham has been cooking for about 2 hours. Take it out of the slow cooker and cut it into slices. Place the slices back in the juices in the slow cooker to keep them warm while you sauté the asparagus.
- Sauté the asparagus.
- Dinner is ready to go! Place the asparagus in a pretty serving dish with a spoon or tongs, place the sliced ham on a nice platter with a serving fork, remove the potatoes from the oven and set on the table with a serving spoon.
- When you are ready, cut the Four Layer Banana Pudding into slices and serve.
I love honey ham. It is my traditional fave for Easter.
Yummy Roast Pork with Apple Sauce and all the roast veggies and peas and corn. Just love sitting down to this on a Sunday evening.
In our family our staple base menu has always been Pineapple Ham with mashed potatoes and steamed brocoli… the rest of the menu depends on who’s coming and what they’ll bring.
I usually have smoked salmon as an entree, deviled eggs is a must as well, some homemade rolls, a spinach salad to accompany the main meal, and whatever scrumptious chocolate dessert I can come up with. 😉 We rarely go hungry.
Oups… I forgot to add 5 star rating for your menu.
First I love your site ,so happy that you let me join, I have made so many of your recipes? I do love the Ham and cheese potatoes . Always looking for new deviled eggs . Thank you .
I love your recipes so much, I hunted for a recipe book and found one. It is the number one cookbook of mine.
Thanks for keeping us informed of all your great dishes!
Happy Easter!
My favorite Easter dinner is now brunch and a nap 🤭. Strawberry cream cheese stuffed waffles, scrambled eggs with cheddar, sour cream and salsa, bacon (extra chewy), OJ, and hot chocolate with real whipped cream. By the time it is dinner time I’m just beginning to feel normal.
I love Easter Dinner with Ham and Party Potatoes, but one of my favorite things is brunch. We still serve Ham and the potatoes, but add a French toast bake and egg bake… wonderful!
I love some ham and deviled eggs brings me to happiness and you guys help me so much with the cooking and my favorite part of the best Easter dinner is the handmade rolls
Sorry forgot to give you 5 stars
Love all of your desserts especially the Cadbury egg cookies AMAZING my family and devoured them i had to make 2 batches❤️🤪
We celebrate with boneless leg of lamb, roast garlic potatoes, green beans with almonds, honey baby carrots, and homemade cloverleaf rolls. The ham dinner sounds wonderful and all we would add is canned crushed pineapple.
We usually will do ham , pierogies , salad , veggies .
Looking at all the wonderful ideas for Easter so it’s time for a change up! Haven’t quite figured which I’d like to try yet but I do see 3 I’d like to give a try! I do love your site and am so I glad I joined! Thanks for the opportunity! Happy Easter all!,
Our favorite Easter dinner is Heavenly Ham from a locally owned grocer, sweet potatoes, grill asparagus, roasted green beans, deviled eggs, last summer’s peaches that were frozen and of course, pies, pies and more pies. (my family loves pie). I’ll make key lime pie, chocolate peanut butter pie, a cheesecake pie and fudge pie. If time allows, we’ll whip up some homemade vanilla ice cream.
The best part is all the family together, the Easter egg hunt in the morning and the grandkids counting the nickel and dimes that were in the plastic eggs.
Fabulous recipes.
The brown sugar Crock pot ham, potato salad , green beans And that delicious Looking banana pudding.
Every Easter I make my own honey baked ham, deviled eggs (grandmother’s recipe), cheesy potato casserole, asparagus with hollandaise, quiche, fruit salad, homemade angel food cake with dehydrated strawberries in the whipped cream AND strawberries on the side, mini lemon pound cake egg cakes with pastel colored glaze frosting… and don’t forget the mimosas!
My husband prefers the ham, mashed potatoes, corn and apple pie, but I’ll skip all of that and just have the Banana Pudding please! Thank you for a great post!
Our favorite Easter dinner is ham, twice baked potatoes, Pea and peanut salad, rolls and for desert usually lemon bars.
My family loves a traditional Easter dinner. Honey glazed ham, with pineapple for some tang, mash potatoes, AU gratins, baby sweet carrots, green bean casserole, glazed yams and Hawaiian sweet roles.
My sweet potato casserole is a favorite on every special occasion.