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BBQ Calculator

Turns a guest list into a shopping list: raw meat by cut — with the honest cooking yields, 50% for ribs and pulled pork against 75% for steak — buns, sides, drinks and ice, then the fuel, charcoal by the kilo or propane as a share of a bottle, and a cost estimate. Metric and imperial together.

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BBQ Calculator is free to use as often as you like, directly from this page. It covers raw meat by cut — with the honest cooking yields, 50% for ribs and pulled pork against 75% for steak — buns, sides, drinks and ice, then the fuel, charcoal by the kilo or propane as a share of a bottle, and a cost estimate. Metric and imperial together — adjust any of them and the result follows immediately.

How to use it

  1. Open the tool — no signup or install needed.
  2. Enter your input or adjust the available options.
  3. Get your result instantly, then copy or download it.

Frequently asked questions

What is BBQ Calculator?

Turns a guest list into a shopping list: raw meat by cut — with the honest cooking yields, 50% for ribs and pulled pork against 75% for steak — buns, sides, drinks and ice, then the fuel, charcoal by the kilo or propane as a share of a bottle, and a cost estimate. Metric and imperial together.

What does it take into account?

It factors in raw meat by cut — with the honest cooking yields, 50% for ribs and pulled pork against 75% for steak — buns, sides, drinks and ice, then the fuel, charcoal by the kilo or propane as a share of a bottle, and a cost estimate. Metric and imperial together. Change any of them and the output follows immediately.

When would I actually use this?

Cooking from a recipe that does not match your kitchen: scaling for a different number of people, converting cups to grams, and substituting what you do not have.

What is the most common mistake?

Converting a cup as if it were a volume of weight. A cup of flour and a cup of sugar differ by nearly a third in mass, so a single conversion factor gets one of them badly wrong.

Is there a tool for the next step?

Baker's Percentage Calculator is the closest one after this: Convert baker's percentages to ingredient weights, with the flour as the 100% base.

What else is worth having open alongside it?

Baking Pan Size Converter and Cheese Board Calculator — they come up in the same task often enough to be worth a second tab.

Where do the figures come from?

Volume-to-weight factors are per ingredient, because density is. Cooking times assume a conventional oven at the stated temperature; fan ovens run hotter and need roughly twenty degrees less.

Further reading

All guides →
ExplainerBaker's Percentage Explained: One Formula, Any Batch SizeFlour is 100 percent and everything else is measured against it. That one convention lets the same recipe scale from a single loaf to a bakery batch without a single new calculation — and yes, the percentages are supposed to add up to more than 100.How-toHow to Convert Any Oven Recipe for an Air FryerDrop 25 °F and cut the time by about a fifth — then adjust for what the food is and how full the basket is, because those two change the answer more than the rule does.GuideThe Sourdough Timeline: An Hour-by-Hour Schedule That Fits a Real DayA full schedule from feeding the starter to slicing the loaf, and the one variable that moves every time on it. Five hours of bulk at 75 °F becomes about seven and a quarter at 68 °F.ExplainerA Cup Is Not a Cup — and That Is Why Your Cake FailedFour different cups are in legal use, and the Australian tablespoon is a third bigger than everyone else's. But the error that actually ruins a bake is smaller than a border: the same cup of flour weighs 120 g or 160 g depending on how you filled it.ExplainerHow Much Wine for a Wedding: Work From Bottles, Not From a Rule of ThumbA 750 ml bottle pours five glasses, and guests average about one drink per hour. Everything else is arithmetic — here it is for 50 to 250 guests over three, four and five hours, with an honest range rather than a single number.GuideYeast Conversion Chart: Fresh, Active Dry and Instant, With the Actual FactorsMultiply fresh yeast by 0.4 for active dry and by 0.33 for instant. Those two numbers are the whole chart, they are King Arthur's professional figures, and they are approximate — here is how far, and what else changes when you swap.