A Christmas dinner timeline works best backwards: choose the time you want to eat, then take away each dish’s cooking and resting time to find when it has to start. Everything lands at once, and you can see oven clashes before the day.
The short answer
- Pick a serving time first, then work backwards for every dish.
- Let the turkey rest under foil: it frees the oven for potatoes and trimmings.
- Use the cooking times on your turkey’s label or from your butcher; the times below are only an example.
Step 1: list every dish
Write down each dish with three numbers: preparation, cooking time and resting time. Include the small things such as gravy, warming plates and bread sauce, because they are what usually gets forgotten.
Step 2: work back from serving time
Start time = serving time − (cooking time + resting time). Do the longest item first, which is nearly always the turkey or other joint.
Step 3: check the oven
Most home ovens cannot hold a turkey, potatoes and three trays of trimmings at the same time. Mark which dishes need the oven and when. Resting the turkey is the usual way to make room: while it rests, the oven goes up for the potatoes.
An example running order for a 2pm dinner
Example only. Your turkey’s size, your oven and your recipes will change the times.
| Time | Job |
|---|---|
| The day before | Peel the potatoes and veg, make the stuffing, check the turkey’s weight and cooking time |
| 10:00 | Turkey in the oven (example: about 3 hours for this bird) |
| 12:15 | Parboil the potatoes |
| 13:00 | Turkey out to rest under foil; oven up; potatoes in |
| 13:15 | Roast carrots and parsnips in |
| 13:20 | Pigs in blankets and stuffing in |
| 13:40 | Make the gravy with the turkey juices |
| 13:45 | Sprouts or greens on |
| 13:50 | Warm the plates, carve the turkey |
| 14:00 | Serve |
Cooking the turkey safely
Follow the time on the label or your butcher’s advice. The Food Standards Agency advises cooking poultry until it is steaming hot all the way through, with no pink meat and clear juices; a meat thermometer in the thickest part is the easiest check. If your turkey is frozen, plan the thawing days in advance and keep it in the fridge.
Make the timeline automatic
If you would rather not do the sums, the Christmas Day Timeline spreadsheet in our shop works the start times out for you once you type your serving time and each dish’s minutes. Prefer paper? Print our free Christmas Day timeline. For the rest of the planning, see the UK Christmas Planner 2026 and the Christmas budget per person guide.
Official sources
Times on this page are an example. Always follow the cooking instructions for your own food.
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