Cooking Time by Weight Calculator

How it is calculated

The tool uses the rule total minutes = weight × minutes per kg + base minutes. Weight is in kilograms, the second field is the minutes per kilogram your recipe or roasting chart gives for that meat, and the base is the fixed number of extra minutes (some recipes add 20 or 30 minutes, others none, so enter 0). The tool does not know any cooking times itself: it only does this arithmetic with the numbers you give. The total is rounded to whole minutes and also split into hours and minutes in the form 2h 15m. Weight must be above zero; the minutes per kg and the base can be any number. The result is for one oven temperature and one doneness level, namely the ones your minutes-per-kg figure was written for. It is an estimate, and a meat thermometer decides when the meat is done.

Common mistakes

• Entering pounds instead of kilograms. The weight field is in kg, so a 5 lb joint must be typed as about 2.3, not 5.
• Using a minutes-per-pound figure in the minutes-per-kg field. A recipe that says 20 minutes per pound is roughly 44 minutes per kilogram.
• Weighing the meat after stuffing, or including bones and packaging, when the recipe's figure refers to the plain meat weight. Weigh it the same way as the recipe does.
• Leaving the base blank in the belief that it is optional extra. If your recipe adds 20 minutes and you enter 0, the estimate is 20 minutes short.
• Forgetting resting time. The result is the time in the oven only; meat usually needs to rest before carving, so start earlier than the serving time suggests.