This Chart Tells You Exactly How Much Turkey You'll Need On Thanksgiving

Photo credit: Ethan Calabrese
Photo credit: Ethan Calabrese

Buying the wrong size turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner is like buying the wrong size underwear. Go with us here! 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 either scenarios, 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.

And because no one wants to scroll through a bunch of long articles while grocery shopping, we turned the guide into an easy-to-read chart:

Photo credit: Allie Folino
Photo credit: Allie Folino

Here at Delish we believe in hitting the sweet spot. While 1 pound per person could feel like too little, and 1 1/2 pounds for each guest might be over-doing it, 1 1/4 pounds of turkey per mouth is the perfect balance.

At that rate, feeding a large party of 15 or more people requires 20+ pounds of turkey. Rather than trying to fit a 25-pound monster in your oven, you might want to cook two smaller birds. If preparing more than one turkey seems like a ton of work, well, it kind of is! So we also recommend preparing a few bone-in breasts to achieve the right amount of turkey for your group. You may even have some leftover for classic Turkey Day leftover recipes.

Once you acquire your perfectly sized turkey, we suggest doing a few cranberry sauce or holiday pie Jell-O shots as a celebration. You're officially on your way to the best Thanksgiving dinner ever. Now get cookin'!

Photo credit: Con Poulos
Photo credit: Con Poulos


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