Outrage over roast potato serving instruction in Christmas dinner guide

Christmas dinner is meant for enjoying quality time with friends, family, and, of course, eating until you can’t fit another bite.

It appears that BBC Good Food magazine isn’t aware of the unspoken rule of Christmas dinner, however, as it recently published a guide that suggested “one large potato each is plenty”.

Alice Pope shared the guide, which offers suggestions for how much you need to buy for Christmas dinner, on Twitter, where she called it “all kinds of wrong”.

“I love BBC Good Food magazine but this is just all kinds of wrong, imagine a Christmas with one roast potato each,” Pope wrote alongside a screenshot of the page.

According to the magazine, two small potatoes each is also a sufficient serving - unless you want leftovers, in which case it advises increasing the amount.

In response to the guide, others have also expressed their outrage at the advice.

“I’d lose my sh** if I was served just ‘one’ roast potato regardless of how many times it has been cut,” one person wrote. “I rely on the cold roastie leftovers on Boxing day to get me out of my wine-flu.”

Another said: “They need to double up everything on there for it to truly be a Christmas meal.”

“So my regular Sunday helping of six to eight pieces (ie three to four potatoes) is a no-no then?” someone else asked.

The backlash eventually made its way back to the people at BBC Good Food magazine, who decided it was necessary to create a hand-drawn guide that explained their reasoning.

“There’s been some heated Christmas dinner debate today, so here are our workings,” the magazine said on Twitter. “Rest assured there are plenty of us in the Good Food offices with giant festive appetites who’d up the quantities too (particularly the gravy)

“We love how passionate you all are about potatoes!”

Unfortunately, the magazine’s maths did little to quell the public's anger.