What size joint of meat do I need for the number of people I am feeding?
How to size a roast by cut and by whether it is on the bone, plus the shrinkage and leftover allowances that make the sum come out right.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 10 min
- Read
- 3 min
Short answer
Allow roughly 200–250g of boneless raw meat per adult, or 300–400g on the bone. Add about a third again if you want leftovers, and more for a very bony joint like a rack or shanks. Fatty joints that render heavily — belly, shoulder — need more raw weight than a lean joint for the same amount on the plate.
Three things make people get this wrong: bone weight, cooking loss, and forgetting that a roast is usually the thing everyone wants a second slice of. Working from raw weight per person with a bone allowance is the reliable method, and it is worth over-buying slightly because cold roast meat is useful and an underfed table is not.
Step by step
- Start from boneless raw weight per adult.Around 200g is a decent serving as part of a full roast dinner with several sides. Around 250g is generous. This is raw weight — expect to lose roughly a fifth to a quarter of it as moisture and rendered fat during cooking.
- Add for bone.For a bone-in joint like a rib of beef or a leg of lamb, work to around 300–350g per adult. For very bony cuts — a rack of lamb, ribs, shanks, wings — count pieces rather than weight: one shank each, two to three ribs each, one small rack between two.
- Add for fatty cuts that render.Pork belly, lamb breast and lamb shoulder lose a great deal of weight as fat renders out. Allow 350–400g raw per adult for these even boneless, and more for belly.
- Count a whole bird by carcass weight.A typical supermarket chicken of around 1.5kg feeds four with sides. A large 2kg bird feeds four to six or four with leftovers. For turkey, work at roughly 450–500g of whole raw bird per adult; for a crown, roughly 300–350g per adult.
- Decide about leftovers on purpose.Add a third to a half again if you want cold meat, sandwiches or a second meal. This is nearly always worth doing on a roast, because the cooking effort is the same and the second meal is free.
- Adjust for the table you actually have.Teenagers and hungry adults eat far more than the figures; small children roughly half. A roast with five substantial sides needs less meat per head than one with two.
- Check the joint is big enough to cook well, not just to feed people.Below about a kilo, a joint is too small to roast properly — the outside is overcooked before the middle warms through. If the numbers give you a very small joint, cook something else: chops, a pot roast, or a smaller bird.
Tips
- Buy one joint rather than two of half the size. Two small joints cook faster, dry more and produce less good gravy than one large one.
- A gammon or ham joint serves further than roast beef because it is dense and usually sliced thin. Around 150–200g raw per adult is enough.
- For a buffet or a spread with several meats, halve the per-person figure for each. Over-catering happens almost entirely at buffets.
Common mistakes
- Sizing a bone-in joint by the boneless figure — A rib of beef can be a third bone by weight. The sum comes out well short and it is discovered at the table.
- Buying to the exact number with no margin — Roast meat is the one thing people go back for, and cooking loss varies by joint. A little extra costs a small amount and removes the problem entirely.
Questions people ask
How big a chicken do I need for six people?
A 2kg bird will do it with generous sides, or a 2.2–2.5kg bird if you want everyone to have a decent second helping. Two smaller birds roast better than one very large one and give you twice as many legs.
Does the joint shrink much?
Expect to lose roughly 20–25% of the raw weight in a normal roast, more in a long slow cook and much more with a fatty cut. That loss is already accounted for in the per-person figures above, which are raw weights.