Recipes - portions - water evaporating

anemoneprose

How do you estimate portions when you cook something like a sauce or stew for a while? Obv can't just use the weight of the raw ingredients. I know things will differ depending on a million things, but what's a rough % minimum you might expect (for say cooking 4 cups of a sauce for 1 hour at med-low heat)? Like 5% reduction, maybe, could be expected?

musenchild

Too much math!

Weigh the finished product, then enter your recipe servings based on weight.

For instance, I made bread yesterday; the recipe made 1440g of bread; I entered my recipe as 14.4 servings. Now each "serving" is 100g, so when I slice off some bread, I just weigh it to log.

Same with any other recipe. Weigh or measure after it's cooked.

Sunitagt

I stick with weighing the raw ingredients since pretty much all your losing is water. I don't see the point of worrying that much about water. When I get the finished meal, I divide it up into '8 servings' then I would measure if I need to, but I can usually just eat '1 serving' however much that may be, as long as they're roughly equal and move on.

anemoneprose

Thanks ladies

The problem doing it after is, it's impossible to tell how many servings there are when people just take any old amount (lol, like regular people). Then I have to estimate what's left & / out the calories. I should get in there quicker!

For raw ingredients - sure, it's just water that goes, but what's left for a given weight is denser cal-wise. Ach, honestly they're all estimates anyway, can't make that much of a difference, *really*. Tore me up a bit yesterday, haha

musenchild

Thanks ladies

The problem doing it after is, it's impossible to tell how many servings there are when people just take any old amount (lol, like regular people). Then I have to estimate what's left & / out the calories. I should get in there quicker!

For raw ingredients - sure, it's just water that goes, but what's left for a given weight is denser cal-wise. Ach, honestly they're all estimates anyway, can't make that much of a difference, *really*. Tore me up a bit yesterday, haha

I know what you mean! I will often weigh the pan I'm cooking in before starting. Then as soon as it's finished, I weigh the whole thing again and subtract the weight of the pan. Then SO can dish straight out of the pot with a spoon, and I'm the only one who needs to weigh my portion.

cavia

I measure out the finished product one cup at a time into a secondary pot. 5 cups=5 servings etc.