Expert: Chef Glen L. Davis II - 12/14/2008

Question
I am having 13 guest for dinner on Christmas and would like to serve turkey.  How many pounds would I need and would there be an advantage to get to small turkeys instead of one large.  If I get two small do I need to adjust temperature of oven and how long to cook

Answer
Good question!
I usually, for catering, serve roughly 8-10oz of cooked, carved meat per person. Being that you are serving this on a holiday people ted to eat more. This being said I would figure on about 169oz/10.56lbs of cooked carved meat. That should give you a little more than what each person (in theory) will eat. That is the "text book" answer. Personally I like to prepare to serve at least 5 extra people. This is because my family has a bad habit of bringing extra people and not telling anyone. Generally if you have more turkey than you need to serve the guests present, the worst that happens is you eat some turkey sandwiches that week! Personally I love turkey sandwiches!

As far as what turkey to purchase, I like cooking a single turkey. When you cook 2 turkeys you can not only cont on double the prep work, but also if you mess up, you mess up twice. Personally I don't like this idea. If it was me I would a roughly 18lb. turkey. That should give you more than enough meat (including dark meat) for each guest, and about 1.5-2lbs. extra carved meat. This is of course assuming that you have about a 30% waste (bones, skin, rendered fat, giblets and neck) included into the total weight of the turkey.

I think that this should answer your question, if there is anything else I can help you with please let me know, and let me know how it turns out.