How best to account for what's "left behind" while cooking a recipe

Liko81

Hi guys,

I do a lot of experimentation with food to find things my wife and 3 preschool kids will eat besides chicken nuggets and various ground beef easy meals (Hamburger Helper, spaghetti bolognese, etc). Nowadays this means I'm often creating recipes in MFP to account for the results.

Last night, we were bad (though not nearly as bad as I thought it would be); tilapia filets, braised in a pesto-like melange of 1/2 cup heavy cream, 1 stick (8tbsp) real butter and 2tbsp olive oil with basil and grape tomatoes, served with a side veggie. Putting it into MFP, all the ingredients of the recipe divided by 4 filets/servings averages just over 400 calories per serving which is less terrible than I thought it'd be putting the recipe together. Granted, you'd have to be in keto for the macro balance to be something you'd go for (about three quarters of the calories are fat), but still.

However, I'm thinking this dish turned out healthier than the raw numbers of the ingredients would indicate, because a large amount of the cream and butter was left behind in the pan. I've seen some related topics about how to account for reduction losses while cooking, the most common answer being "don't; it's practically all water", but in this case that's simply not true; the leavings were fairly obviously liquid fat. In some circumstances, accounting for everything even if it's left behind works (usually because the leavings are an insignificant difference in calories), but here, the recipe had over a thousand fat calories inherent in about a cup of dairy fats, most of which never made it to a plate. If you're trying to hit a calorie/macro goal and most of the fat calories you're logging don't get eaten, that can be just as harmful to weight loss as underestimating what you eat, especially if you're on a diet like low-carb/keto.

So, how should I account for the fact that a significant volume of the cream and butter stayed in the pan and was never eaten? I could pour the drippings into a measuring cup, reason that what's left is about equal parts cream and butter, and subtract that volume from the total input of the recipe. That would still be an overestimation because the fat density of the drippings will be higher due to evaporation loss (cream and butter both have significant water content), but it would be closer.

Or, I could just make sure all the calories get eaten, by further reducing the cooking liquids into a pan sauce and doling it out among all servings. Then the recipe as the sum of its ingredients would be accurate, but in this particular case that's not great either; it would be exactly as bad as MFP indicates.

I know I could just refrain from cooking with butter and cream, but every once in a while it just has to be done; everyone here knows that total abstention from fats and sugars isn't a sustainable lifestyle change. So when it does happen a few times in a blue moon, how should we accurately account for it?

cannonball99

This wont be accurate but might be a reasonable compromise: weight the portions eaten, and the portion left over. Let's say 10% is left over, I'd subtract that from what's logged. So log 0.9 portions instead of 1. Alternatively to compensate for the fact that the leftovers have more fat that what you ate, you could subtract 20%. I try to be accurate as well but prefer to log a bit too much than too little.

jvcjim

what i have done is weigh the leftover sauce, especially when it is mainly just fats and then, in my recipe, reduce them proportionally. in the case above i would be lazy and say that the leftover should equally reduce my cream and butter content. that should work out pretty close

Francl27

I log it anyway.

abitofbliss

I experienced this recently with some chicken breasts in Jack Daniels sauce I bought. I ate the chicken and scraped a bunch of the sauce off.. By the time I finished the container almost all of the sauce that came in the package was tossed less the small amount soaked up and barely glazing the chicken. The carb/sugar #'s were scary.

I want to use these again so the best solution I found was to log the chicken breasts and add the sauce separately as 1 - 2 tablespoons. I would suggest the same or similar. Add the ingredients that will get eaten then determine a lesser amount for the cream and butter. So say you use a full cup to cook the meal but only use 1/4 then log accordingly.

I hope this helps.