Calculating calories for fried foods when cooking

alisreyn

I want to try a recipe that requires you to bread and pan fry pork chops. When I enter the recipe using the My Fitness Pal recipe tool, it assumes that I'm eating 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, 1/3 stick of butter, and 2 Tb. olive oil, because that's what is in the ingredient list for 1 pork chop. In reality, when you bread something, you end up lightly coating it and tossing most of the flour and bread crumbs out. Also, I know frying it absorbs some of the oil and butter, but it's not like I'm sitting there with a fork eating a stick of butter.

I'm asking because when I enter it in the recipe calculator, it comes up with an extremely high calorie count (1200!) for one serving. I know this isn't the healthiest dish, but I also know that 1200 calories for one 4 ounce pork chop seems much too high. Does anyone know how to calculate the calories for the breading and butter when you are pan frying something from scratch? I'd like to get as accurate of a count as possible for dinner so I know how to adjust the rest of my meals accordingly. Thanks!

astrose00

I pan-fry all the time. I love my cast iron pans! I use Olive oil, though but I think butter is similar in terms of calories. I basically deconstruct everything I cook and enter my own numbers. So for your dish, I would put seasoned flour on the scale (doesn't matter how much) and weigh it. The I'd flour the pork chops and set them aside. I would weigh the remaining flour and subtract it from the original number. That's how much flour (ignoring the amounts that fall into the oil...) is on the pork chop. For pan frying, you only need a little oil. I might put in a tablespoon of olive oil while the pan heats up then drain most of the excess back into the tablespoon once it's hot. The difference between the tablespoon and what you put back is how much oil is in your chop.

Keep in mind, you could mostly likely estimate an 1/8th cup of flour, 2 teaspoons of butter and call it a day. But since you are asking means you really want a more accurate way of doing it. I should mention that it's easier to use grams instead of ounces. I think 100 grams is about 3.5oz. If you do this once, you don't need to do it again. Just assume the same amounts whenever you make this dish... and don't forget to weigh and add the pork chop!!! The estimate I gave would be for each pork chop you make.

astrose00

FYI, I fixed some typos...

alisreyn

Thanks! That is a wonderful answer!