How Big Of A Turkey Should You Get?

It’s probably no accident that when you type just the words “how big” into the Google search engine this time of year, one of the top autofill responses it suggests for you to click is “how big of a turkey should i get”.

We’re here to help you answer that question, using the thought process worked out by the creative minds of Delish, who balanced the needs to feed everyone at your table with the desire to have a reasonable amount of leftovers after the big meal!

Here’s how they described their problem statement:

Buying the wrong size turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner is like buying the wrong size underwear—if it’s too small you feel a sense of awkward desperation, but if it’s too big you feel like you’re swimming in it. To avoid that, we’ve come up with a fool-proof equation to calculate how much turkey you’ll need based on the number of people you’re serving.

While they put their solution into a chart, we’re going to consolidate it into a simple tool, where you just need to enter how many people you’re seeking to feed at your Thanksgiving dinner. If you’re accessing this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, please click through to our site to access a working version of the tool.

Our turkey size tool will give you the “optimal” Ready-To-Cook weight of a turkey to get to both feed your guests and have a fair amount of leftovers, the “minimum” RTC weight of a turkey that would be enough to feed your guests and have minimal leftovers, and also the “maximum” RTC weight of a turkey that will feed your guests and let you have a generous amount of leftover turkey for future meals.

The Delish staff recommends that if you need more than 20 pounds of turkey to feed your guests, rather than get a giant bird from your grocer that might overwhelm your oven, you might instead consider cooking more than one turkey. In that situation, you might consider roasting a bone-in turkey breast along with a traditional bird if you need 8 or fewer additional pounds of turkey to feed all your guests.

And if you only need 8 or fewer pounds of turkey, roasting only a bone-in turkey breast might fit the bill, unless you really like traditional stuffing!