How to plan a stress-free roast dinner

Roast dinners are extremely popular in the UK. But ask any home cook and they will tell you that serving up a full roast with all elements ready at the same time (and cooked perfectly) takes a fair bit of planning. This blog will take you through how to plan a stress-free roast dinner that everyone will enjoy.

What’s a roast dinner again?

A British roast dinner is traditionally a main element of roasted meat, fish or a veggie alternative. This is served alongside a selection of vegetables, often roast potatoes and boiled or steamed fresh vegetables like carrots and peas. You may want to serve a sauce such as mustard or horseradish with beef, apple sauce with pork. Many families like to pop a Yorkshire pudding on the plate too and then of course you’ll need a thick delicious gravy to pour over everything.

Wow, that’s a lot of elements on one plate!

Yes! A roast dinner is in fact quite a feat of home cooking as it requires all of these different components to be ready at the same time. Of course you can simplify it by removing some of the elements. But if you want to go ‘full roast’ all you need is a little forethought and planning.

Let’s plan the cooking process ⏳

First up, let’s list each part of the meal and assign it a cooking time. Usually your meat will go into the oven first, our example will be for a classic roast chicken so you’ll need to adjust times accordingly depending on what your main meat/fish/veg alternative is. If you’re just learning, you can jot your times down on a piece of paper so that it’s nice and clear before you start cooking.

1.5kg Chicken: 1 hour 20 minutes in the oven plus 20 minutes resting time
Roast potatoes: 15 minutes par boiling plus 60 minutes roasting time in the oven
Yorkshire puddings: 25 minutes in the oven
Steamed fresh vegetables: 10 minutes on the hob
Gravy - instant (let’s keep it simple today): 5 minutes on the counter top
Cold sauce condiment: instant (again lets use readymade today to keep it simple), pop the lid and add a spoon!

Next assign times of day to your cooking process 🕰

To do this we are going to decide on a serving time and then work backwards to find out when everything needs to be put in the oven or on the hob.

Our example serving time is 1pm

In order for the chicken to be ready for 1pm it must go into a pre-heated oven at 11.20am. See the below list for the cooking times assigned to our example roast dinner to be served at 1pm.

Stress-free roast dinner top tips 💡

Lay the table early and well before serving time
Don’t forget to put salt, pepper and any cold sauces on the table
If you’re putting hot dishes on the table use heat-proof place mats
You may want to warm your plates in the oven for a minute before serving, this will help to stop the veggies going cold as quickly

Top tips from our Cookpad Ambassador home cooks: