The Roast Chicken Timer — How Long to Roast a Chicken

By Linda Garrould · Updated 25 July 2026

The Food Standards Agency’s rule for a whole roast chicken is 45 minutes per kilogram plus 20 minutes, in an oven set to 180°C (160°C fan, gas mark 4) — so a typical 1.5kg bird takes about an hour and a half. But the clock is only ever an estimate: a chicken is cooked when the thickest part of the thigh reads 75°C on a thermometer, checked at the breast too. Then it needs to rest for 15 to 20 minutes before carving, which is the difference between a bird that’s juicy and one that’s dry. Prefer a gentler oven? There’s a slow & low setting too, for anyone cooking with a thermometer. Set the weight below and the timer will do the arithmetic — including working backwards from the time you want to sit down.

What the Food Standards Agency recommends

Start here, because this is the official line and it is the one to follow if you are cooking by the
clock. The FSA’s guidance for a whole chicken is 45 minutes per kilogram plus 20
minutes, in a preheated oven at 180°C (160°C fan, gas mark 4). So a
typical 1.5kg bird takes about an hour and a half.

The times below are that rule, worked out. They are for a whole, unstuffed chicken, and the timer at the top of this page uses the same figures — so pin whichever you prefer to the fridge door.

The FSA rule: whole chicken, unstuffed, at 180°C / 160°C fan / gas mark 4, at 45 minutes per kilogram plus 20 minutes. Always confirm 75°C before serving.

Weight	Roasting time	Serves
1.2 kg	1 hr 14 min	2–3
1.5 kg	1 hr 28 min	3–4
1.75 kg	1 hr 39 min	4–5
2 kg	1 hr 50 min	5–6
2.25 kg	2 hr 1 min	6–8
2.5 kg	2 hr 13 min	6–8

A note on stuffing. The FSA advises cooking stuffing in a separate tin rather than in
the bird, and its cooking guidelines assume an unstuffed bird — a stuffed chicken takes longer and
may not cook through. We would follow that advice: separate stuffing is safer and gives you far more
crisp edges. If you do stuff the cavity, add 15–30 minutes and probe the centre of the
stuffing itself as well as the meat; it must reach 75°C too. If the stuffing is short of
temperature, the bird goes back in the oven with the stuffing still inside it.

One thing the FSA’s figure does not cover is the skin. At 180°C a bird cooks perfectly well but colours slowly, and you can end up with a chicken that is properly done and disappointingly pale. So treat the last quarter of an hour as a separate job: with 15 minutes left on the clock, turn the oven up to 220°C (200°C fan, gas 7) and leave the bird there for the rest of its time. The total does not change — the heat does.

And a caveat about cooking by the clock at all: these times assume an oven that runs true, and most domestic ovens do not. Which is why the next section matters more than this one.

The thermometer is the whole thing

Here is the argument in one sentence: you want the bird to reach a safe temperature and then come out,
because every extra minute past that point is drying the breast. A timer cannot tell you when that
moment arrives — it can only tell you when a bird of average weight in an oven of average accuracy
would probably be close. A thermometer tells you.

Chicken must be cooked all the way through. Unlike whole cuts of beef or lamb, poultry can carry
bacteria throughout the meat, so “pink in the middle” is never an option. The FSA’s
standard is that the centre of the meat should reach 70°C for two minutes, or an
equivalent combination — the published set runs 60°C for 45 minutes, 65°C for 10 minutes,
70°C for 2 minutes, 75°C for 30 seconds, or 80°C for 6 seconds. In a home
kitchen the simplest target is 75°C, and a whole bird carries so much heat that it
holds there and beyond during its rest, comfortably clearing the 30 seconds.

Probe two places, not one. Push the tip into the thickest part of the thigh, between
the drumstick and the breast, keeping clear of the bone — bone conducts heat unpredictably and will
give you a reading several degrees out in either direction. Then check again in the thickest part of the
breast, going in deep beside the breastbone without touching it. At the point you are checking, thigh and breast are typically five to ten degrees apart — more than that earlier in the cook — and the bird is only as cooked as its coolest reading.

Pull it a little short. A chicken keeps cooking after it leaves the oven — a 1.5kg bird climbs about another 5°C as it rests. So aim to finish at temperature on the board rather than reach it in the oven: if either site reads under 70°C it goes back in; anywhere between 70 and 75°C you can take it out, and it will coast the rest of the way while it rests. That one habit is what separates a chicken that is well cooked from one that is merely not dangerous.

If you don’t own a thermometer, the FSA offers a fallback: pierce the thickest
part of the thigh and check that the juices run clear with no pink or red, that there is no pink fleshy
meat, and that it is steaming hot all the way through. Use it — but know its limits. Test kitchens
have had juices run clear on a bird at 63°C, well short of safe, and stay faintly pink on one cooked
to 82°C. Colour tracks a pigment, not a temperature. It is a rule of thumb, not a measurement, which
is precisely why the probe is worth buying.

A decent instant-read thermometer is the piece of equipment on this page that changes the food most.
Expect to pay fifteen to twenty-five pounds rather than five: the cheapest models are slow and drift by
several degrees, which is the entire margin we have been talking about. You can
browse instant-read food thermometers on Amazon here.
(As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.)

Slow and low: a gentler oven, if you have a thermometer

If you want a gentler oven than the FSA’s, here is how to do it without going somewhere unsafe. The reasoning is about the temperature gradient. In a fierce oven the outside of the breast races well past done — drying out and
squeezing out moisture — long before the middle is safe. The bigger the gap between the oven
temperature and the temperature you are cooking the meat to, the more parched outer meat you end
up with. A cooler oven narrows that gap, so more of the breast finishes close to ideal rather than
beyond it.

The principle is well established rather than fashionable. Restaurant kitchens actually split two ways, and both are defensible. Thomas Keller roasts at 230°C from start to finish and gets his crisp skin from fierce heat and a bone-dry bird. Heston Blumenthal goes the other way: hours at 90°C to an internal 60°C — then browns the skin separately at the end. That one leans on holding the meat at temperature long enough to pasteurise it — 60°C only counts if it is held there for 45 minutes — which is a restaurant calculation, not a Sunday one. America’s Test Kitchen starts at 230°C and then switches the oven off, letting the bird coast up in falling heat. What they agree on is that a chicken is cooked to a number, not to a clock.

There is a floor, though, and it is higher than the internet suggests. Food-safety
authorities are wary of very cool ovens for whole birds, because a chicken with a cold cavity can spend
too long in the bacterial danger zone — which the FSA puts at 8–63°C.
The US Department of Agriculture sets its floor at an oven temperature of no lower than
163°C (325°F) for meat and poultry. That does not leave much room below the FSA’s
180°C, and we are not going to pretend otherwise: our slow setting is 170°C conventional
/ gas mark 3, which clears the floor outright, or 150°C in a fan oven,
where forced circulation moves heat at least as fast as still air at 170°C. Genuine low-and-slow
roasting below that is a restaurant technique with a probe in the bird throughout, and not something we
would send you into on a Sunday morning.

The trade you are making. A gentler oven buys you a more evenly cooked breast and
costs you about twenty minutes on a 1.5kg bird — and it makes the thermometer compulsory rather than merely wise, because you are now off the FSA’s clock-based figures and cooking to a number instead. On the slow setting a whole bird takes about 50 minutes per kilogram plus 20 minutes at 170°C, and then a further 10 minutes at 220°C (200°C fan, gas 7) to colour the skin, which a low oven will never do on its own. The times in the table include that final ten minutes.

Slow & low: whole chicken, unstuffed, at 170°C / 150°C fan / gas mark 3, at 50 minutes per kilogram plus 20 minutes — plus a final 10 minutes at 220°C for the skin, which the times below already add on. Confirm 75°C at the thigh and the breast before serving — on this setting the probe is not optional.

Weight	Slow roasting time	Serves
1.2 kg	1 hr 30 min	2–3
1.5 kg	1 hr 45 min	3–4
1.75 kg	1 hr 58 min	4–5
2 kg	2 hr 10 min	5–6
2.25 kg	2 hr 23 min	6–8
2.5 kg	2 hr 35 min	6–8

One honest caveat: the biggest lever for a moist bird is not the oven temperature at all. It is not
overcooking it, resting it, and salting it ahead — which is why the salt leads our tips below.

Why is my roast chicken dry — and how to keep it moist

Nearly always, a dry roast chicken has simply been in the oven too long. The breast is lean
and unforgiving, and it goes from succulent to stringy in the space of ten or fifteen minutes. So the
first and biggest fix is the one above: cook to temperature, not to a hopeful over-estimate. Beyond that,
a handful of habits genuinely help — and two widely repeated ones do not.

• Rest it properly. This matters so much it has its own section below — skipping
  it is the most common reason a perfectly cooked bird still eats dry.
• Butter under the skin. Loosen the skin over the breast with your fingers and push
  softened butter — plain, or mashed with lemon zest, garlic and thyme — directly onto the
  meat. It won’t “baste from the inside”; fat does not travel into muscle. What it does
  is season the leanest meat directly rather than through an inch of skin, and help that skin render and
  brown. Both are worth having.
• Start it breast-side down, then turn it. Sit the bird breast-down on a rack for the
  first third of its time. The point is not that juices run into the breast — they don’t
  — it is that the breast is shielded from the fierce heat coming off the oven roof while the thighs,
  which need more, get it. Then turn it breast-up so the skin colours. Do it on a rack, not straight onto
  the tin, or the breast steams against the metal.
• Keep the oven moist — then dry it out at the end. If your oven has no steam function, set a small roasting tray of water on the bottom shelf while the chicken cooks. The gentle humidity slows moisture loss from the meat and helps the bird cook evenly — it is the domestic version of what a combi-steam oven does, and it is a trick we have used for years. The trick is the timing: keep the steam in for the first three-quarters of the cook and take the tray out for the last quarter. Steam and crisp skin cannot share an oven, so the bird needs that last stretch in dry heat to colour. For a 1.5kg bird on the standard setting — 88 minutes — the tray comes out at about 66 minutes in, which leaves it a few dry minutes at 180°C before you turn the heat up to 220°C for the final 15. Moist while it cooks, dry while it browns.
• Foil only if it is browning too fast. If the breast is colouring faster than the thighs are cooking, lay a loose sheet of foil over the top and take it off for the final stretch.
• Don’t bother basting. It is the most repeated instruction in roast cookery and
  one of the least useful. Cook’s Illustrated roasted three turkey breasts — one basted every twenty minutes, one left alone, and one where the oven door was opened and shut at the same intervals but nothing was basted. Moisture loss came out at 22.4 to 24.0 per cent across all three. The basted bird took ten minutes longer than the control, and the one where the door was merely opened took seven of those ten — which tells you where the cost really is. Butter it at the start, then shut the door and leave it alone.
• Take it out of the fridge early — for the skin, not the temperature. The
  half-hour-on-the-counter rule is one of the great kitchen articles of faith, and it has been measured: a
  joint this size gains barely a degree or two at its centre in half an hour, so it will not meaningfully
  change the cooking time. What the time does buy you is a drier skin, which is worth having. Take the bird
  out when you turn the oven on, pat it dry, and don’t leave raw poultry standing for more than a
  couple of hours.

Spatchcock it: the shortcut worth knowing

Nearly everything above is a workaround for a single structural problem — a whole chicken is the
wrong shape. The breast sits proud and lean and cooks fast; the thighs sit tucked away and dense and cook
slowly; and no oven setting fully reconciles them.

Spatchcocking does. Turn the bird breast-down and run poultry shears — or a heavy cook’s knife, but not ordinary kitchen scissors, which will fight you at the ribs — up either side of the backbone and lift it out (keep it — it makes the best stock on this page). Turn the bird over and
press firmly on the breastbone until it cracks flat. Your butcher will do it in ten seconds if you ask.

Flattened, the breast and thighs sit at the same level and finish within a few minutes of each other.
Almost all the skin now faces the heat. And the cooking time collapses: a 1.5kg spatchcocked bird takes about 40 to 45 minutes at 220°C (200°C fan, gas mark 7) rather than an hour and a half — allow 45 to 50 minutes for 1.75kg and 50 to 55 for a 2kg bird, though a flat bird cooks fast and varies between ovens, so check early. The high heat is the point — a flat bird can take it without the breast overshooting, which is exactly what a whole one cannot do, and it is where the crackle comes from.

Roast it flat on a wire rack set in a shallow tray. The rack matters more here than for a whole bird, because it is the only thing letting the underside dry rather than stew. Tuck the wing tips under so they don’t catch, and lay the backbone in the tray to colour for the gravy. Start checking at 35 minutes. Probe the thickest part of each thigh, going in from the side, and the thickest part of the breast — the coolest reading is the one that counts here as much as anywhere. Take it to a full 75°C rather than pulling at 70: a flat bird carries far less residual heat than a whole one, so don’t count on carryover to finish the job. Ten minutes’ rest is plenty. Because it is a different shape entirely, the timer at the top of this page does not cover spatchcocked birds.

You lose the theatre of carrying a whole bird to the table. You gain a better dinner and most of a
Sunday morning. On any weekend that isn’t Christmas, we spatchcock.

Resting: the step most people skip

When a chicken comes out of the oven its juices have been driven towards the centre and the muscle
fibres are tense. Carve it straight away and those juices run out onto the board instead of staying in
the meat, which is the very definition of a dry dinner. Give it 15 to 20 minutes
— 25 for a bird over 2kg — and the juices redistribute while the fibres relax. It carves far
more cleanly, too.

Rest it on a rack set over a tray, uncovered. A board traps steam underneath and
turns the underside skin to leather, and foil does the same from above: tenting keeps a little more heat
in at the cost of softening the crisp skin you have just worked for. If your kitchen is genuinely cold,
tent it loosely for the last few minutes only, and never wrap it.

You have far more headroom than most recipes imply. The thermometer people at ETI logged 1.6kg birds resting uncovered in a 21°C kitchen: they peaked at about 80°C a quarter of an hour in, and took fifty-nine minutes to fall to 60°C. So twenty minutes is a floor rather than a ceiling, and if the potatoes want the oven a while longer the bird will wait half an hour quite happily. (For reference, the FSA’s minimum for food held hot before serving is 63°C.) This is also your window for the gravy, so nothing is wasted.

Carving: joint it, don’t slice it

The commonest carving mistake is trying to slice the breast while it is still attached to the bird.
You cannot get a knife in cleanly, the slices tear, and the skin you worked for comes away in rags. Take the bird apart instead. It takes a couple of minutes, and less every time you do it.

1. Legs first — and take the oysters with them. Cut through the skin between thigh and body and pull the leg outwards until the hip joint pops. Before you cut through, roll the leg out and feel round the back of the bird for the oyster: a thumb-sized nugget of dark meat sitting in a hollow beside the backbone, just above the joint. Run the knife tip round it so it comes away attached to the thigh — it is the best mouthful on the bird, and carve past it and it stays stuck to the carcass. Then cut through the joint, repeat on the other side, and split each leg at the knee for four pieces of dark meat.
2. Mind the wishbone. It arches over the breast at the neck end. Feel for it and cut round it — or, next time, take it out with a small knife before the bird goes in, which makes the top of each breast come away that much more cleanly.
3. Wings off. Cut down through the shoulder joint where the wing meets the body — it pops the same way the hip did. Take the whole wing rather than just the tip, and either serve them or break them into the gravy where they earn their keep.
4. Breasts off whole. Run the knife down one side of the breastbone and follow the
   ribcage down, keeping the blade against the bone, until the whole breast comes away in one piece with its
   skin intact. Repeat on the other side.
5. Then slice. Lay each breast on the board and cut it across on the diagonal into four
   or five thick slices. Now you can slice properly, with skin on top of every piece.

Serve dark and white meat together, and pour whatever has collected in the resting tray into the
gravy.

Tips for the best roast chicken

The timing and temperature above will give you a safe, juicy bird. These are the touches that lift it
from good to the one everyone remembers:

• Dry-brine it, and weigh the salt. Use 1% of the bird’s weight — 15g for a 1.5kg chicken — and don’t measure it in spoons: a teaspoon of fine salt weighs roughly twice what a teaspoon of Maldon does, so the same three spoonfuls can be a fifth over or half under. Rub it over the skin and inside the cavity, then sit the bird on a rack in the fridge overnight, uncovered, on the bottom shelf with nothing stored underneath it. Overnight genuinely
  beats an hour: the salt has time to travel into the meat rather than sitting on it, and the cold moving
  air dries the skin to the point where it crisps almost by itself. One weighed step does more for the
  finished bird than any oven trick on this page.
• Dry the skin. Whether or not you brine overnight, pat the whole bird thoroughly dry
  with kitchen paper before it goes anywhere near the oven. A dry skin is a crisp, golden skin; a damp one
  steams.
• Don’t truss it. Tying the legs tight against the breast is done for looks and
  works against you: it shields the thighs, which need the heat most, and traps it against the breast,
  which needs it least. Leave the legs splayed and let air into the gap. A fractionally less handsome bird,
  a noticeably better-cooked one.
• Fill the cavity for flavour, not stuffing. Half a lemon, a few garlic cloves, a
  peeled onion and a bundle of thyme or rosemary perfume the meat from within as it roasts — without
  the extra time, and the extra checking, that stuffing the bird brings.
• Lift the bird off the tin. Sit it on a rack, or on a bed of thickly sliced onion and
  a couple of carrots, so hot air circulates underneath and the base doesn’t stew. If you use
  vegetables, add a splash of water or stock to the tin at the start — an hour and a half under a
  dripping bird will otherwise leave them black and bitter rather than the beginnings of a good gravy.
• If the thighs lag behind, joint it. If the breast is at temperature and the thighs
  are not, take the whole bird out, cut the legs off and put just the legs back in for another ten minutes
  while the crown rests. Nobody at the table will know, and it saves you overcooking the breast to rescue
  the legs.
• Never cook from frozen. Unless the packaging explicitly says the bird can be, defrost
  it fully in the fridge first — on the bottom shelf, in a covered container big enough to catch the
  drips. Allow 10–12 hours per kilogram, so a 2kg bird needs a full day and is happier with two. Once
  thawed, cook within 24 hours and never defrost at room temperature. A still-frozen core will read as done
  at the surface long before the middle is safe.
• Save the carcass — but get it cold first. Strip the meat within two hours of
  serving rather than leaving the bird out through the washing-up, and get both meat and carcass into the
  fridge in covered containers. Then roast the bones if they aren’t already coloured, and simmer them
  with an onion, a carrot and a bay leaf for a couple of hours — at a bare tremble, never a boil, or
  the stock goes cloudy, and hold the salt. Cooked chicken keeps two days in the fridge, or freeze it;
  reheat leftovers once only, and until steaming hot right through rather than merely warm.

What to serve with roast chicken

A roast chicken is only as good as the plates around it. The classics earn their place: crisp roast potatoes — par-boiled, roughed up and finished in the fierce oven that browns the bird — and sweet, glossy honey-glazed Chantenay carrots, which are quick, forgiving and go down well with children and grandparents alike. Round it out with a green vegetable (buttered peas, broccoli or spring cabbage), a jug of proper gravy made from the pan juices, and bread sauce or stuffing cooked in a separate dish. To get every element onto the table at the same moment, see planning the whole Sunday lunch further down this page.

Planning the whole Sunday lunch

The timer above settles the bird. The harder question is everything else — the potatoes, the Yorkshires, the greens and the gravy all arriving at the table at the same moment as a rested chicken, out of one oven. This section is the full plan, and it is mostly subtraction.

Everything on a Sunday plate has a fixed length. A 1.5kg chicken needs about an hour and a half in the oven and fifteen to twenty minutes’ rest. Roast potatoes need about an hour and a half once they hit the fat — most of it at the chicken’s gentler heat, then the last stretch in the fierce oven that browns the bird and frees up when it comes out. Turn them twice. Yorkshire puddings need twenty minutes and refuse to be hurried. Greens want three to five minutes and not a second more. Gravy takes five.

Because those lengths are fixed, the only thing you control is when each one starts. Pin the finish to your serving time, subtract each item’s length, and you have its start. Do the bird first — longest and least forgiving — and the rest arranges itself around it. Decide when you want to sit down; everything else is arithmetic.

The timeline: one oven, served at 1:00pm

This is a 1.5kg whole chicken for three or four people, served at one o’clock, cooked in a single oven. The times are rounded to the nearest few minutes so they are easy to hold in your head — the timer above will give you them to the minute, for your bird and your serving time. Read it as a countdown. The bars show what is in the oven and when; the dashed line is the moment everything meets the table.

The countdown, step by step

Here is the same plan in words. Set a timer on your phone each time the next thing is due; that, and not nerves, is what keeps a roast calm.

1. 10:30 — Out of the fridge, oven on. Take the chicken out and pat it dry — the point is a drier skin, not a warmer bird, whatever you have been told. Turn the oven to 180°C (160°C fan, gas 4) and leave it there — the 45-minutes-per-kilogram rule assumes that temperature throughout. If you did not make the Yorkshire batter yesterday, make it now and leave it to rest.
2. 10:55 — Potatoes on, fat heating. Start them before the bird, while the oven comes up. Peel and cut your potatoes into large even pieces, start them in cold salted water and give them ten to twelve minutes from the boil — a knife should slide in with no resistance and the edges just begin to crumble. A firm potato cannot be roughed up, and a smooth potato cannot crisp. Pour a generous layer of fat into a roasting tin and slide it into the oven to get properly hot — a cold tin is why roasties go pale and greasy.
3. 11:10 — Chicken in. If you salted it yesterday it needs nothing more; if not, season it now. Sit it on a rack, or on thickly sliced onion and carrot with a splash of water in the tin, and give it its 88 minutes (45 minutes per kilogram plus 20, for a 1.5kg bird). This is the moment the whole clock starts.
4. 11:28 — Drain and dry the potatoes. Drain them, tip them back into the dry pan and leave them off the heat, lid off, for a good five minutes until the surfaces look chalky and matte — the same rule as the chicken’s skin, since fat crisps dry surfaces and steams wet ones. Then shake the pan hard to rough up the edges.
5. 11:35 — Potatoes into the fat. Tip them into the hot fat — it should be shimmering and loose when you tilt the tin, though it will not smoke at this temperature and does not need to — and put the tray on the shelf below the chicken.
6. 12:16 — Water tray out. If you have been roasting with a tray of water in the bottom of the oven, take it out now — three-quarters of the way through the chicken’s time. From here the oven wants to be dry so the skin can colour.
7. 12:23 — Oven up, tins in, potatoes turned. Turn the oven to 220°C (200°C fan, gas 7) with the bird still in. Allow five minutes for it to climb and the bird still gets a good ten minutes of genuinely fierce heat, which is what colours the skin. Oil the Yorkshire tins and slide them onto the top shelf now so they come up with the oven — cold tins in a half-heated oven are why Yorkshires fail. Turn the potatoes while the door is open, and check the vegetables under the bird: if the tin has gone dry, splash in a little more water. Move the plates somewhere warm that isn’t the oven, because it is about to get too hot for them.
8. 12:38 — Chicken out. 70–75°C at the thickest part of the thigh, and check the breast too. Lift it onto a rack set over a tray, uncovered, and leave it alone. Move the potatoes to the middle shelf, turning them again, and leave the top shelf for the Yorkshires.
9. 12:40 — Yorkshires in. Pull out the tins — the oil should be shimmering and just about smoking after ten minutes at 220°C — pour in the rested batter and get them straight back in. Shut the door and do not open it for twenty minutes. If your Yorkshires normally sink, cool fat and an oven that never recovered its heat are almost always why.
10. 12:45 — Gravy, and the greens pan on. Fill a pan for the greens and set it on to boil now. Lift the vegetables out of the roasting tin with a slotted spoon and press them through a sieve into a jug — that is flavour, not waste. Then tip the tin and pour off all but about two tablespoons of the fat — keep the rest in a jar for next week’s potatoes. Skip this and you will serve gravy with a slick on top. Set the tin over a medium hob heat, stir in a spoon of flour, and gradually whisk in stock, scraping up every sticky brown bit. Let it bubble and thicken. The juices from the resting tray go in right at the end.
11. 12:55 — Greens in, and start carving. Bring the pan up to a hard rolling boil and drop the greens in: spring greens and shredded cabbage three to four minutes, broccoli florets two to three, peas two. Past five minutes the colour turns from green to olive and brassicas start to smell of school. Drain the moment a stalk gives to a knife tip, and finish with butter and pepper in the hot dry pan.
12. 1:00 — Serve. Yorkshires out on the dot, potatoes crisp, greens drained, gravy poured, bird jointed. Joint it while the greens cook and the Yorkshires finish — the sequence is in carving, above — so nothing stands about waiting. Sit down.

If you only remember one figure, remember that an 88-minute bird must come out at 12:38 to be carved, properly rested, at one o’clock — and that the last 15 minutes of those 88 are at 220°C, for the skin. Change the weight or the serving time and the timer at the top of this page will redo the whole sum for you.

Do it on Saturday: the make-ahead list

The calmest Sunday roasts are mostly cooked on Saturday. None of this is essential, but each job you move to the day before is one fewer thing competing for the oven and your attention on the day.

• Salt the bird. If you are dry-brining — and you should — this is the job that matters most: 1% of its weight in salt, then uncovered on a rack in the fridge overnight. Take the wishbone out while you are there.
• Yorkshire batter. Whisk it the night before and keep it in the fridge; a rested batter rises better. It can even be made in bulk and frozen. Our foolproof Yorkshire pudding recipe has the proportions.
• Potatoes. Peel and cut them, then leave them overnight in a pan of cold water in the fridge so they are ready to go straight on to parboil.
• Gravy base. If your butcher gives you bones, roast them with an onion, a carrot and a stick of celery and simmer into a stock. On the day you deglaze the roasting tin and stir it in.
• Reheatable sides. An extra dish like cauliflower cheese or braised red cabbage is best made now and reheated, so it never competes with the bird for oven space. Slide it in during the resting window, or warm it on the hob.
• Greens and sauces. Trim the greens and store them in a sealed box. Make any cold sauces — horseradish, apple, mint — and the table is half-laid before Sunday begins.

More kitchen timers

If you found this useful, our other one-tap kitchen timers take the guesswork out of the trickiest little jobs: the roast beef timer, the leg of lamb timer and the pork loin timer for the rest of the Sunday roast rotation, the dippy egg timer for eggs and soldiers done to the second, and the poached egg timer for a properly set white and a runny yolk, by pan, microwave or air fryer.

Frequently asked questions

What temperature should a roast chicken be inside?

Aim for 75°C at the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone — and check the thickest part of the breast too. At the point you are checking, the two are typically five to ten degrees apart, and the bird is only as cooked as its coolest reading. That comfortably meets the Food Standards Agency’s standard of 70°C for two minutes, or 75°C for 30 seconds. Pull the bird a few degrees short, as it will climb another 3–5°C while it rests.

How long does a 1.5kg or 2kg chicken take?

At the FSA’s 180°C / 160°C fan / gas 4, a 1.5kg chicken takes about 1 hour 28 minutes and a 2kg chicken about 1 hour 50 minutes — 45 minutes per kilogram plus 20 minutes. On our slower 170°C / gas 3 setting, allow 50 minutes per kilogram plus 20, plus a final 10 minutes at 220°C for the skin. Always confirm 75°C before serving.

Why does this page use 180°C when other recipes say 200°C?

Because 45 minutes per kilogram plus 20 minutes is the FSA’s figure for a 180°C oven, and the two belong together. Pair that timing with a 200°C oven, as many guides do, and you cook the bird longer than it needs at a heat that dries the breast faster. If you prefer a hotter oven for the skin, that’s fine — but go by the thermometer and start checking 15 minutes early.

Should I roast a chicken slow and low?

You can, and you will get a more evenly cooked breast for it — though professional kitchens split both ways on this, and a fierce oven is just as defensible. The catch is that there’s a safety floor: the USDA advises against roasting poultry in an oven below 163°C, so our slow setting is 170°C conventional / gas 3, or 150°C in a fan oven. Allow about twenty minutes longer on a 1.5kg bird, including a final 10 minutes at 220°C for the skin, and use a thermometer — on a gentler oven you are cooking to a temperature rather than to the FSA’s clock.

How do I know the chicken is cooked without a thermometer?

Pierce the thickest part of the thigh, between the drumstick and the breast. The juices should run clear with no pink or red tinge, there should be no pink fleshy meat, and it should be steaming hot all the way through. It is the FSA’s fallback and it is better than nothing, but it is a rough signal rather than a measurement: juices have been shown to run clear on an undercooked bird and stay faintly pink on a thoroughly cooked one. Buy the probe.

How long should a roast chicken rest?

Fifteen to twenty minutes, or 25 for a bird over 2kg, on a rack over a tray and uncovered. Foil and a flat board both trap steam and soften the skin. Twenty minutes is a floor rather than a ceiling: instrumented tests have uncovered birds still above 60°C nearly an hour later, so if the potatoes want the oven, the bird will wait.

Is the cooking time different for a fan oven?

The time is the same — you just lower the temperature. 180°C conventional, 160°C fan and gas mark 4 all use 45 minutes per kilogram plus 20 minutes. As always, the thermometer settles it.

What time should I put the roast in to eat at 1pm?

Work backwards. For a 1.5kg chicken — about 88 minutes in the oven at 180°C, plus 15 to 20 minutes’ rest — it goes in at around 11:10 to be carved at one o’clock. For a different weight or serving time, the timer at the top of this page does the subtraction for you.

Should I put a tray of water in the oven when roasting chicken?

It helps, if you get the timing right. A tray of water on the bottom shelf is the domestic version of a combi-steam oven: the humidity slows moisture loss from the meat while it cooks. But steam is the enemy of crisp skin, so keep it in for the first three-quarters of the cooking time and take the tray out for the last quarter — about 66 minutes into an 88-minute bird — so the skin has dry heat to colour in before you turn the oven up to 220°C.

When do the Yorkshire puddings go in?

As the bird comes out to rest — but get the oiled tins in a good fifteen minutes before that, while the chicken is still cooking and the oven is already up at 220°C, so the fat is properly hot when the batter hits it. Pour, shut the door, and leave it shut for twenty minutes. Cold tins and an oven that never recovered its heat are why Yorkshires sink.

Sources: Food Standards Agency — Cooking your food; FSA — Christmas food hygiene (the 45 minutes per kilogram rule and the oven it belongs to);
FSA — Avoiding cross-contamination;
FSA — Chilling, freezing and defrosting;
USDA FSIS — How Temperatures Affect Food;
America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated on basting and doneness testing; ETI — How long to rest a roast chicken for the instrumented resting figures.
Where our advice differs from a supermarket guide or a packet, it is because we have followed the FSA.
This page is general cookery guidance and does not replace the instructions on your bird’s packaging
if they differ.

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