Marinades... how do they work?

zwoodcock

So, my wife and I had a discussion today regarding marinades. We're having a glazed fish dish for dinner tonight, and for the purposes of calorie calculation, I put it into MFP as a new Recipe with the entire marinade as a part of the dish. Considering that I'm not gonna drink the damned marinade after I'm done cooking, how should I actually log that?

Thanks.

Alatariel75

For the purposes of being very accurate, I tend to make the marinade as its own recipe and weigh it then after I remove the meat/fish, weigh the remaining marinade and divide the difference between the number of serves of meat and log that.

So - say 100g of marinade, 2 pieces of fish. After I take the fish out, there's 46g of marinade left, 54g has gone on the fish, so 28g of marinade gets logged per one piece of fish.

zwoodcock

Gotcha. That's what I had thought about doing, but I wasn't sure if that would give me an accurate count. Thanks!

rankinsect

Basically what I do as well, although I tend to do this only once per recipe and just use that as "good enough" for future versions of that dish. Most of the time the calorie contribution is pretty small anyway.

sheermomentum

I usually add a tablespoon to my diary, unless I'm cooking with the marinade as a sauce. I think a tablespoon is a pretty safe high-end estimate if you draining the marinade off before cooking.

chastity0921

From my many classes in foods and nutrition, marinades usually don't many calories to the food. What is absorbed is usually cooked off. I would add maybe 25-50 calories for safety, but that is it. They're a really smart way to add flavor (and help to prevent cancer-causing heterocyclic amines). Remember that, even though not many calories are added, there is plenty of sodium that will remain!

lohlgren

Love the search feature on MFP. We're having this same discussion this morning as we prep turkey for a batch of jerky. Thank you for the info!