Christmas dinner is a timing problem wearing a paper hat. The bird is bigger than anything else you roast all year, the oven is fuller, and everyone sits down at once. The fix is the same as any roast: work backwards from the moment you want to serve. For lunch at 2 pm, a typical 6 kg turkey goes into the oven at 10:15 am, comes out to rest at 1:40 pm, and the potatoes get the hot oven while it rests.
The tables below cover every common turkey size for a 1 pm or 2 pm lunch. For your exact bird, your exact serving time, and every side dish scheduled around it, use the calculator - it builds the whole day into one chart.
Want the full schedule, not just the turkey? Open the planner with a Christmas dinner already loaded - turkey, roast potatoes, parsnips, sprouts, red cabbage, pigs in blankets, stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce and a rich Christmas gravy - then swap in your own dishes and serving time.
What time should the turkey go in?
These tables are generated by the same calculator that builds the full schedule, so the numbers here and the numbers in your chart agree. They assume a fresh or fully defrosted bird, roasted at 180°C / 350°F / Gas Mark 4 in a preheated conventional oven, loosely covered with foil, with the foil coming off an hour before serving so the skin browns (a 3 kg bird cooks quickly enough that the planner skips the foil step). The turkey comes out 20 minutes before you serve and rests under foil - carving happens in that window, not on the table.
Christmas lunch at 1 pm
| Turkey weight | Cooking time | Out of the fridge | Into the oven | Out to rest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 kg (6.6 lb) | 2 hr 20 min | 9:45 am | 10:20 am | 12:40 pm |
| 4 kg (8.8 lb) | 2 hr 40 min | 9:15 am | 10:00 am | 12:40 pm |
| 5 kg (11.0 lb) | 3 hr 5 min | 8:35 am | 9:35 am | 12:40 pm |
| 6 kg (13.2 lb) | 3 hr 25 min | 8:05 am | 9:15 am | 12:40 pm |
| 7 kg (15.4 lb) | 3 hr 45 min | 7:35 am | 8:55 am | 12:40 pm |
| 8 kg (17.6 lb) | 4 hr 10 min | 7:00 am | 8:30 am | 12:40 pm |
| 9 kg (19.8 lb) | 4 hr 30 min | 6:30 am | 8:10 am | 12:40 pm |
| 10 kg (22.0 lb) | 4 hr 55 min | 5:50 am | 7:45 am | 12:40 pm |
Christmas lunch at 2 pm
| Turkey weight | Cooking time | Out of the fridge | Into the oven | Out to rest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 kg (6.6 lb) | 2 hr 20 min | 10:45 am | 11:20 am | 1:40 pm |
| 4 kg (8.8 lb) | 2 hr 40 min | 10:15 am | 11:00 am | 1:40 pm |
| 5 kg (11.0 lb) | 3 hr 5 min | 9:35 am | 10:35 am | 1:40 pm |
| 6 kg (13.2 lb) | 3 hr 25 min | 9:05 am | 10:15 am | 1:40 pm |
| 7 kg (15.4 lb) | 3 hr 45 min | 8:35 am | 9:55 am | 1:40 pm |
| 8 kg (17.6 lb) | 4 hr 10 min | 8:00 am | 9:30 am | 1:40 pm |
| 9 kg (19.8 lb) | 4 hr 30 min | 7:30 am | 9:10 am | 1:40 pm |
| 10 kg (22.0 lb) | 4 hr 55 min | 6:50 am | 8:45 am | 1:40 pm |
Eating at a different time, or cooking goose, ham or beef instead? Set your own serving time in the calculator and it recomputes everything, sides included. If you would rather cook low and slow, pick Turkey (slow-roasted) in the planner - it runs at 165°C / 325°F / Gas Mark 3 and is more forgiving on a busy morning.
Defrosting: the deadline people miss
A frozen turkey is the one Christmas job you cannot speed up on the day. In a fridge at 4°C or below, allow 10 to 12 hours per kg - so a big bird needs to start defrosting days before Christmas, not the night before. Defrost it in a tray deep enough to catch the juices, on the bottom shelf where nothing can drip onto other food, and check the cavity for giblets once it has loosened up.
| Turkey weight | Time in the fridge | Start defrosting by |
|---|---|---|
| 3 kg | 30 to 36 hours | Evening of 23 December |
| 4 kg | 40 to 48 hours | Morning of 23 December |
| 5 kg | 50 to 60 hours | Evening of 22 December |
| 6 kg | 60 to 72 hours | Morning of 22 December |
| 7 kg | 70 to 84 hours | Evening of 21 December |
| 8 kg | 80 to 96 hours | Morning of 21 December |
| 9 kg | 90 to 108 hours | Evening of 20 December |
| 10 kg | 100 to 120 hours | Morning of 20 December |
If you have the fridge space, starting half a day earlier than the table says costs nothing and buys a margin. The turkey is fully defrosted when the cavity is free of ice crystals and the legs move freely. Once defrosted, keep it in the fridge and cook it within the time given on the packaging - and never refreeze a raw bird that has thawed. This follows Food Standards Agency guidance; when in doubt, trust the packet over any chart, including this one.
Christmas Eve: everything you can do the day before
Restaurants get eight things onto a plate at once by cooking half of them the day before, and Christmas dinner is the meal where copying them pays off most. Nothing on this list suffers for being done a day early - and the cooked dishes among them, the gravy base, the red cabbage, the bread sauce and the cranberry sauce, are marked ★ Make ahead in the planner, which schedules the on-the-day reheat for you.
- Get-ahead gravy Make the full gravy base today, then enrich it with the turkey resting juices tomorrow. This is the single biggest stress remover on the list, because gravy is otherwise the last job of the morning.
- Braised red cabbage It takes up to two hours in the oven, and it is genuinely better made a day early and reheated. Doing it today keeps tomorrow's oven free for things that must be roasted fresh.
- Peel the potatoes and parsnips Leave them submerged in cold water in the fridge overnight and they come to no harm.
- Prep the sprouts Trimmed and crossed, into a bag, into the fridge. If you are doing them with bacon and chestnuts, fry the bacon today too.
- Make the stuffing Shape stuffing balls and refrigerate them raw, ready to go straight into the oven tomorrow.
- Bread sauce and cranberry sauce Both hold perfectly overnight, and cranberry sauce is arguably better after a day in the fridge.
- Lay the table and chill the drinks Not cooking, but it is fifteen minutes tonight that you will not have tomorrow.
One oven, ten dishes: use the resting window
The reason Christmas dinner feels impossible in a single oven is that people try to cook everything at once. The trick is that you do not have to: the turkey's rest is the potatoes' oven time. Once the bird comes out, covered in foil and a couple of tea towels, the oven can go up to full temperature for the roast potatoes, parsnips and Yorkshire puddings - and a rested turkey is better than one carved straight from the oven anyway.
If the 20-minute rest in the schedule is not enough oven time, rest the turkey longer. Under foil it will still be properly hot after an hour, and the carving gets easier the longer it sits. If you do have a second oven, tick I have two ovens in the planner and it will split the dishes by temperature and give each oven its own preheat step.
The only test that matters at the end: the thickest part of the thigh needs to reach 70°C for two minutes, or 75°C for thirty seconds, in line with Food Standards Agency guidance - a meat thermometer settles it in five seconds - not a job for guesswork after four hours of cooking. There is a full safe temperatures table on the main page.
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Christmas turkey questions, answered
How long does it take to defrost a turkey in the fridge?
Allow 10 to 12 hours per kg in a fridge at 4°C or below - a 6 kg turkey needs up to three days, so it should start defrosting by the morning of 22 December for Christmas Day. Keep it in the fridge until it is time to cook.
How long does a 6 kg turkey take to cook?
A 6 kg turkey takes about 3 hours 25 minutes at 180°C / 350°F / Gas Mark 4. For Christmas lunch at 2 pm it goes into the oven at 10:15 am and comes out to rest at 1:40 pm.
Should I cover the turkey with foil?
Yes - roast it loosely covered with foil for most of the cooking time, then remove the foil an hour before serving so the skin browns. The foil keeps the breast from drying out before the thigh is cooked.
Can I cook a turkey from frozen?
Not a standard turkey - it must be fully defrosted first, or the middle can still be raw when the outside looks done. Check that the cavity is free of ice crystals and the legs move freely before it goes anywhere near the oven.
What if the turkey is ready before everything else?
Nothing bad happens. A rested turkey holds its heat under foil and a couple of tea towels for up to an hour, and a longer rest makes it easier to carve - the schedule builds in 20 minutes, but running over is not a problem.
When should the turkey come out of the fridge on Christmas morning?
About an hour before it goes into the oven for a mid-sized bird, and closer to two hours for anything over 8 kg. A turkey straight from a cold fridge cooks unevenly, which is the most common cause of a bird that is scorched outside and underdone at the thigh.
About these timings
Every number on this page comes from the same calculation the Roast Timer planner uses: a per-weight rate plus a fixed allowance, rounded up to the nearest five minutes, with the joint out of the oven 20 minutes before serving. Treat any chart as a guide rather than a guarantee - ovens vary, birds vary, and a thermometer beats a timer every time.