Serving Size

adgreen63

What do you do when you find a recipe that does not include serving size? For instance, I imported some great soup recipes just now but there were no serving size listed. Is the normal serving size for soup 1 cup?

CyberTone

Here is what I do when I make a pot or batch of food.
- Weigh and record the weight of your cooking pot or storage container(s).​
- Weigh and record the individual weights of all ingredients (raw or pre-cooked) that contribute Calories, including oil, butter, and any spices more than 1 tsp. (more than 3 g) - if you want to be exact, and all salt if you need to monitor your sodium intake.
- Cook recipe, adding water if needed - water contributes zero Calories.
- After cooking, weigh cooked food in cooking pot or in storage container.
- Subtract weight of cooking pot or storage container.
- Record total weight of cooked food.
- Either set serving size as total weight of cooked food or divide into X number of servings by a convenient serving weight, such as 1g, 100g, or for US users 1oz. or 1 cup (8 oz. or about 230g).
- Use the Recipe Importer or Old Recipe Calculator to enter the weights of each individual raw ingredient to calculate macro- and micronutrients, then record the Recipe as X number of servings.
- Tip: Record total weight and number of servings in the Name of the Recipe since there is no other place to record that information.

rbiss

I use a cup measure and measure out portions. Then divide the total # of calories in the dish by the number of portions I made. Usually I play around with the portions to get enough calories in a meal or plan a snack with the meal.

Francl27

Recipe calories online are wrong 99% of the time anyway.

I weigh my ingredients and enter them in the recipe builder. Then I weigh the final product and enter the number of grams as the number of servings. Doesn't really get easier than that (for meatballs or muffins I just try to make each one even by weighing the batter, but I guess you could weigh them all too).

I've done it with cups and it just didn't add up in the end... I had counted 10 cups and finished the whole dish with 8 cups logged. Not accurate IMO.

JanetMMcC

How much does your soup pot hold? If it's a 4-quart pot, make yourself familiar with how it looks with 1 qt, 2 qts, 3 qts in it. That'll be 4, 8, 12 cups. Divide total calories by the number of cups you've made.
Or keep a couple 2qt pitchers, sturdy clear or translucent plastic marked in cups. (If you can't find any marked in cups, pour in a cup of water at a time and mark with a permanent marker.) The first time you make a recipe, put the soup straight into those before serving. (If it's a big batch, a pitcher takes less space in the fridge than most storage containers, anyway.) Divide calorie total by cups, and you can decide how many cups make a serving that fits that day's calorie needs.

Me, I often use big yogurt tubs or the containers from diced onions, either of which holds 4 cups. I tell my cookbook program that 1 serving = 1 cup, then have however many "servings" works that day.

hedwardsb

adgreen63 wrote: »

What do you do when you find a recipe that does not include serving size? For instance, I imported some great soup recipes just now but there were no serving size listed. Is the normal serving size for soup 1 cup?

I had the same problem last night with a soup recipe. I put it as 8 servings, and I've been eating about a cup each. I'm just going to have to wait and see how many times I get to eat it to see if I made the right choice. I'll tweak it afterwards. The other option would have been to measure it all out. I'm not that concerned.