Roast Dinner Timing Calculator: What Time To Put Everything In

The hard part of a roast is not cooking any one thing, it is getting the meat, the potatoes, the stuffing and the veg to land on the table together. Tell us what you are cooking, how heavy it is and when you want to sit down, and this works backwards to give you a single timeline: what goes in the oven, and at what time. The meat resting at the end is what makes room in the oven for the potatoes to crisp, so we build that in for you.

The single biggest reason a roast goes wrong is not resting the meat. Take the joint out, cover it loosely with foil and let it sit while you turn the oven up and crisp the potatoes; it will hold its heat for a good half hour and carve far better. This planner builds that resting window in automatically, which is also when your gravy and last-minute veg get done.

Times are a planning guide based on standard minutes per kilo at a hot roasting temperature, with resting added. Ovens vary, so use a meat thermometer for the joint and treat the side timings as the running order rather than to the exact minute.