For party hosts
How much turkey per person, plus real quantities for sides and dessert. The food-planning math for a holiday dinner, with a free calculator to size it to your guest count.
Hosting the big holiday dinner comes with its own math, and unlike most parties, this is one meal where you actually want leftovers. Turkey sandwiches the next day are half the point. Here's how much to buy so you land right in that sweet spot: plenty for everyone at the table, plus a little extra to send home.
The classic question, and it depends on whether you're buying bone-in or boneless. A whole bone-in turkey loses a good amount of its weight to bone and carcass, so you need more raw weight per person than you'd guess.
Bone-in turkey (whole bird): 1 to 1.5lbs raw weight per person, leaning toward the higher end if you want leftovers
Boneless turkey breast/roast: 1/2 to 3/4lb raw weight per person, since there's no bone weight to account for
Rule of thumb: A 12-14lb turkey comfortably feeds 8-10 people with leftovers; a 16-18lb bird stretches to 12-14
Sides are where holiday meals get generous. Most tables have 4-6 different sides, so per-person quantities of any single dish are smaller than you'd plan for a simpler dinner.
Each side dish: About 1/2 cup per person, per side. If you're serving 5 sides, that's roughly 2.5 cups of food per person total across all of them
Stuffing / dressing: 1/2 to 3/4 cup per person, a bit more if it's a table favorite
Gravy: About 1/3 cup per person, and a little extra never hurts with gravy
Dessert: Plan for 1.5 servings per person if you're offering pie or cake, since holiday dessert tables tend to see seconds
Unlike a party, where extra food mostly means waste, a holiday dinner is different, because most hosts want leftovers on purpose. Turkey sandwiches, a second round of stuffing, pie for breakfast: that's part of the tradition for a lot of families. So it's fine, even encouraged, to buy toward the higher end of these ranges rather than trimming down to the bare minimum.
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Hosting a bigger holiday event or catering one professionally? Catering Calc Pro has tools for that as well.