How to count family style one pot meals?
hablondi
Posts: 127 Member
How do you count these types of meals? For instance, I am making chicken noodle soup in my Instant Pot from homemade chicken broth for the family tonight. Tips for calculating the calories and serving size? Thanks!
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Replies
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MFP has a pretty good recipe calculator. I'll plug in the ingredients and let it do the work, and usually set the servings to either how many meals I need something to be or what I would like the calories to be. And then portion accordingly. If I don't have exact matches, I guesstimate as closely as I can.6
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Since a recipe makes a batch of something, and you usually eat a portion of the whole thing, it is customary to measure that portion (a serving) by volume (cup, slice, piece, scoop) or weight (ounces, grams). Measuring by weight is normally more accurate than by volume, but many people do it by volume for the convenience, or because they don't have a food scale. I did not use a food scale until I reached maintenance, so I measured everything by volume while I was losing.
There are lots of ways to determine what size to make a serving, it is up to you. For a one-pot recipe, you can either weigh the final batch and make a serving size one ounce or one gram, or one sixth of the total weight, or the weight of the whole batch. For a one-pot recipe, I normally make a serving size equal 1 measuring cup (about 230 grams); at the end, I add just enough water to make the final batch equal to a multiple of 1 cup or 230 grams, such as 10 cups or 2300 grams total.
Suppose you choose to make your serving size 1 measuring cup and you don't care about the weight.
Make the recipe, add all of the total amounts of ingredients to the Recipe Tool and guess that your recipe will make 6 cups. Put the number of servings as 6 into the Recipe Tool for starters; you can always go back and edit the recipe to change how many servings the batch actually made.
When the batch is done, take a 1 cup measuring cup and measure out how many cups the final batch makes as you scoop it into a second pot. Suppose the final count of full cups was 6, but you had about a half cup of the batch left. Just add some water to the seventh cup to make it a full cup, and stir that seventh cup into the rest. Now you have a batch that measures a total of 7 cups.
Edit the recipe in the Recipe Tool to change 6 servings to 7 servings.The Recipe Tool will now calculate the Calories and other nutrient information per 1 measuring cup serving.
When you serve a portion, measure out by cups. So if someone takes 2 cups of the batch, log 2 servings of the recipe. If someone takes one and a half cups, log 1.5 servings of the recipe.
Edited to add:
I would suggest putting the final serving size and per serving Calorie information in the name of the Recipe (you can always edit the name) so that you can easily see that information when you look at your Recipe list, or when you log it in your Food Diary.
I now use a food scale and weigh my recipes. I use the following format for naming a recipe. Yeah, it may be a little overkill, but I can see all of the information at a glance.
Recipe - [Keywords] [Date] [Total_Weight] [Number_of_Servings] [Weight_per_Serving] [Calories_per_Serving]
Example:
Recipe - Jambalaya, Chicken Chorizo Mussels 2015.10.03 4140g 18Srv 230g 169Cals5 -
Create your recipe and put in all your ingredients. To get a more precise calorie count when I eat a portion, I weigh the entire meal first. (Minus the dish it's in, of course) I put the weight of the dish as the number it serves. Then weigh and log as usual when eating some of it.1
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Use the recipe calculator. Weigh your pot before you begin cooking. Weigh the ingredients as you cook. Weigh the finished dish, subtract out the weight of the pot, and divide by the number of serving sizes you listed in the calculator. This weight is your serving size. If you don't have a food scale, you can measure out your ingredients and the finished product, but it won't be near as handy or accurate.
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Wow! Thank you everyone for the tips. This will be very helpful!!!0
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I make a lot of homemade foods and what I've found works best for me is to weigh out the ingredients on the food scale (I now keep a metric conversion chart on my kitchen wall so I can figure out how many grams is in a cup).
Depending on what I'm cooking, I either weigh the dish it's being cooked in or I weigh the dish that I'll be serving it in. Soup, stews, and shredded meats I'll take out of their cooking container and weigh in a different bowl that's already been zeroed out on my scale. Casseroles and things I'll weigh in their zeroed out cooking dish before putting it in the oven.
Once I have the overall amount in grams of how much food there is, I just log the amount of grams as the serving size in the recipe calculator. Then, I weigh out how much I feel like eating and log it. So, if I want 100 grams of casserole, I'll just log it as 100 servings of casserole.
Weirdly, it doesn't take that much time to do once you get used to it. It adds maybe 2-3 minutes to my cooking time now and I'm able to more accurately judge my logging.3 -
Just did this with the chicken soup. It was a bit of work at first, but I eventually got a system in place. Going to try this again tomorrow with our Instant Pot Pasta (can you tell I got one for Christmas - lol!). Thanks, again!2
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So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams. I entered that amount into the servings. I then weighed my serving and got 281. When I entered that into my food diary as my number of servings it only gave me 67 calories. With the amount of chicken alone in the bowl, I know that is wrong. Any idea what happened and how I can fix it?0
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Did you double check all of the matched ingredients? They are sometimes really off. Also, make sure you're entering raw ingredients into the builder.0
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Queenmunchy wrote: »Did you double check all of the matched ingredients? They are sometimes really off. Also, make sure you're entering raw ingredients into the builder.
I used the old builder and weighed all ingredients and entered their gram weight. And, yes, I entered raw ones.
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So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams. I entered that amount into the servings. I then weighed my serving and got 281. When I entered that into my food diary as my number of servings it only gave me 67 calories. With the amount of chicken alone in the bowl, I know that is wrong. Any idea what happened and how I can fix it?
Yeah, double check all the ingredients you used... sometimes entries are off and it can mess up the whole recipe.
Dumb question but you weighed it cooked, right?
But there are issues sometimes with the recipe builder too, so double check everything, save it again, and try again.0 -
Also: The nutrition facts say 1 calorie per serving. I am assuming that is because it can't go lower than that. I think that this method works well for most things where the ingredients are more mixed together, but maybe not for broth based soups?0
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It should still work - assuming your ingredients are pretty equally dispersed in your pot.
How about a screen shot? That could help pinpoint. I'm annoyed for you!0 -
Queenmunchy wrote: »It should still work - assuming your ingredients are pretty equally dispersed in your pot.
How about a screen shot? That could help pinpoint. I'm annoyed for you!
Here ya go! Hopefully you will see something I'm missing.
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That looks right 0
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That is weird. I'm so sorry to hear that you've been having issues with that method! I can't remember off-hand if I've ever used it with broth-based soups, but I know that I've used it with stew...
Possibly, you could weigh it as fl. ounce and get a more accurate reading? That's how most soup bars/restaurants weigh soup out, so it could be more accurate to go that route instead of grams?0 -
Also: The nutrition facts say 1 calorie per serving. I am assuming that is because it can't go lower than that. I think that this method works well for most things where the ingredients are more mixed together, but maybe not for broth based soups?
It's still the most accurate you'll get.
But it's a MFP bug in your case. I added everything and for 3100 servings, your serving should be 165 calories, not 61. I'd edit the recipe, add 1 serving or something, and try again.
ETA: the bug has been mentioned in this thread
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10014325/updated-recipe-tool-feedback#latest
I'd post your issue there too.1 -
So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams. I entered that amount into the servings. I then weighed my serving and got 281. When I entered that into my food diary as my number of servings it only gave me 67 calories. With the amount of chicken alone in the bowl, I know that is wrong. Any idea what happened and how I can fix it?
Yeah, double check all the ingredients you used... sometimes entries are off and it can mess up the whole recipe.
Dumb question but you weighed it cooked, right?
But there are issues sometimes with the recipe builder too, so double check everything, save it again, and try again.
Not a dumb question. Actually I weighed the pot with all the ingredients before cooking because I didn't want to put the hot pot on my kitchen scale. I entered everything in the builder as raw, as well. Would that have really made a big difference?
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Also: The nutrition facts say 1 calorie per serving. I am assuming that is because it can't go lower than that. I think that this method works well for most things where the ingredients are more mixed together, but maybe not for broth based soups?
It's still the most accurate you'll get.
But it's a MFP bug in your case. I added everything and for 3100 servings, your serving should be 165 calories, not 61. I'd edit the recipe, add 1 serving or something, and try again.
ETA: the bug has been mentioned in this thread
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10014325/updated-recipe-tool-feedback#latest
I'd post your issue there too.
Thank you! That number makes more much sense! I'll check out that thread.
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So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams. I entered that amount into the servings. I then weighed my serving and got 281. When I entered that into my food diary as my number of servings it only gave me 67 calories. With the amount of chicken alone in the bowl, I know that is wrong. Any idea what happened and how I can fix it?
Yeah, double check all the ingredients you used... sometimes entries are off and it can mess up the whole recipe.
Dumb question but you weighed it cooked, right?
But there are issues sometimes with the recipe builder too, so double check everything, save it again, and try again.
Not a dumb question. Actually I weighed the pot with all the ingredients before cooking because I didn't want to put the hot pot on my kitchen scale. I entered everything in the builder as raw, as well. Would that have really made a big difference?
Well, food cooks down as it cooks and will definitely weigh less when cooked, so in your case you will probably get less servings than what you entered (and each serving should be more calories). That might be your problem actually... your 212g cooked could have been 350g raw.0 -
So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams. I entered that amount into the servings. I then weighed my serving and got 281. When I entered that into my food diary as my number of servings it only gave me 67 calories. With the amount of chicken alone in the bowl, I know that is wrong. Any idea what happened and how I can fix it?
Yeah, double check all the ingredients you used... sometimes entries are off and it can mess up the whole recipe.
Dumb question but you weighed it cooked, right?
But there are issues sometimes with the recipe builder too, so double check everything, save it again, and try again.
Not a dumb question. Actually I weighed the pot with all the ingredients before cooking because I didn't want to put the hot pot on my kitchen scale. I entered everything in the builder as raw, as well. Would that have really made a big difference?
Well, food cooks down as it cooks and will definitely weigh less when cooked, so in your case you will probably get less servings than what you entered (and each serving should be more calories). That might be your problem actually... your 212g cooked could have been 350g raw.
Okay. That makes sense. But then do I enter the food as cooked or raw into the builder? Starting to get confused, lol.
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It's a personal preference for most people as to whether they enter something in as cooked or raw.
There's some good insights here for meats:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10490355/is-it-true-you-should-weigh-your-meats-raw
I personally weigh my meats and veggies raw. But, I weigh grains and rice cooked because there's such a difference in volume after cooking.0 -
Queenmunchy wrote: »Did you double check all of the matched ingredients? They are sometimes really off. Also, make sure you're entering raw ingredients into the builder.
I used the old builder and weighed all ingredients and entered their gram weight. And, yes, I entered raw ones.
I did a test of the same ingredients using the Old Recipe Calculator and made the servings 1 to check the total Cals and nutrients for the batch. Screen capture below.
I then made the number of servings 3100 to check the per serving information. Screen capture below.
I then saved the Recipe and added 281 servings of serving size 1 gram to my Food Diary and got 200 Cals. Screen capture below. Everything worked fine and 200 Cals is what I would calculate by hand: 2404 Cals divided by 3100g is 0.711 Cals per serving, times 281 grams is 200 Cals.
I'm not sure what happened when you did it. I do know some people have problems when choosing the Save and Log button. It is best to Save the Recipe; then go to your Food Diary and add the saved Recipe from there.
I would recommend opening a Case with Customer Support on the MFP Help/FAQ pages and provide Customer Support a link to this thread.
http://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/emails/new0 -
So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams. I entered that amount into the servings. I then weighed my serving and got 281. When I entered that into my food diary as my number of servings it only gave me 67 calories. With the amount of chicken alone in the bowl, I know that is wrong. Any idea what happened and how I can fix it?
Yeah, double check all the ingredients you used... sometimes entries are off and it can mess up the whole recipe.
Dumb question but you weighed it cooked, right?
But there are issues sometimes with the recipe builder too, so double check everything, save it again, and try again.
Not a dumb question. Actually I weighed the pot with all the ingredients before cooking because I didn't want to put the hot pot on my kitchen scale. I entered everything in the builder as raw, as well. Would that have really made a big difference?
Well, food cooks down as it cooks and will definitely weigh less when cooked, so in your case you will probably get less servings than what you entered (and each serving should be more calories). That might be your problem actually... your 212g cooked could have been 350g raw.
Okay. That makes sense. But then do I enter the food as cooked or raw into the builder? Starting to get confused, lol.
Well when you make a recipe like this, it's not possible to enter everything cooked anyway, so just enter it raw, then weigh the whole thing once it's cooked. Obviously though if you use precooked things in the recipe, just enter that using a cooked entry.
I then saved the Recipe and added 281 servings of serving size 1 gram to my Food Diary and got 200 Cals. Screen capture below. Everything worked fine and 200 Cals is what I would calculate by hand: 2404 Cals divided by 3100g is 0.711 Cals per serving, times 281 grams is 200 Cals.
I'm not sure what happened when you did it. I do know some people have problems when choosing the Save and Log button. It is best to Save the Recipe; then go to your Food Diary and add the saved Recipe from there.
It's because she weighed the pot before it was cooked, so her serving size won't be accurate.0 -
I then saved the Recipe and added 281 servings of serving size 1 gram to my Food Diary and got 200 Cals. Screen capture below. Everything worked fine and 200 Cals is what I would calculate by hand: 2404 Cals divided by 3100g is 0.711 Cals per serving, times 281 grams is 200 Cals.
I'm not sure what happened when you did it. I do know some people have problems when choosing the Save and Log button. It is best to Save the Recipe; then go to your Food Diary and add the saved Recipe from there.
It's because she weighed the pot before it was cooked, so her serving size won't be accurate.
The OP indicates that she weighed the pot empty, then subtracted.So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams.
I added up the weight of the ingredients and estimated the ingredients weigh 3400+ grams, so 3100g for the final cooked weight makes sense.
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So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams. I entered that amount into the servings. I then weighed my serving and got 281. When I entered that into my food diary as my number of servings it only gave me 67 calories. With the amount of chicken alone in the bowl, I know that is wrong. Any idea what happened and how I can fix it?
Yeah, double check all the ingredients you used... sometimes entries are off and it can mess up the whole recipe.
Dumb question but you weighed it cooked, right?
But there are issues sometimes with the recipe builder too, so double check everything, save it again, and try again.
Not a dumb question. Actually I weighed the pot with all the ingredients before cooking because I didn't want to put the hot pot on my kitchen scale. I entered everything in the builder as raw, as well. Would that have really made a big difference?
Well, food cooks down as it cooks and will definitely weigh less when cooked, so in your case you will probably get less servings than what you entered (and each serving should be more calories). That might be your problem actually... your 212g cooked could have been 350g raw.
This is why I weigh the dish after cooking. I've (carefully) weighed huge skillets & casserole dishes right on the scale and have never had a problem.0 -
I then saved the Recipe and added 281 servings of serving size 1 gram to my Food Diary and got 200 Cals. Screen capture below. Everything worked fine and 200 Cals is what I would calculate by hand: 2404 Cals divided by 3100g is 0.711 Cals per serving, times 281 grams is 200 Cals.
I'm not sure what happened when you did it. I do know some people have problems when choosing the Save and Log button. It is best to Save the Recipe; then go to your Food Diary and add the saved Recipe from there.
It's because she weighed the pot before it was cooked, so her serving size won't be accurate.
The OP indicates that she weighed the pot empty, then subtracted.So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams.
I added up the weight of the ingredients and estimated the ingredients weigh 3400+ grams, so 3100g for the final cooked weight makes sense.
But she weighed everything raw... not cooked.0 -
I then saved the Recipe and added 281 servings of serving size 1 gram to my Food Diary and got 200 Cals. Screen capture below. Everything worked fine and 200 Cals is what I would calculate by hand: 2404 Cals divided by 3100g is 0.711 Cals per serving, times 281 grams is 200 Cals.
I'm not sure what happened when you did it. I do know some people have problems when choosing the Save and Log button. It is best to Save the Recipe; then go to your Food Diary and add the saved Recipe from there.
It's because she weighed the pot before it was cooked, so her serving size won't be accurate.
The OP indicates that she weighed the pot empty, then subtracted.So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams.
I added up the weight of the ingredients and estimated the ingredients weigh 3400+ grams, so 3100g for the final cooked weight makes sense.
But she weighed everything raw... not cooked.
Yeah, I saw where OP indicated that she weighed the pot plus ingredients before cooking. I added the estimated weight from the list of ingredients as a sum check and got 3430g. I can't resolve that discrepancy without further input from the OP.
OP, was the chicken broth concentrated and you added water? That would throw my estimated ingredient weight off, if the added water was not enough to make a total of 8 cups.0 -
I then saved the Recipe and added 281 servings of serving size 1 gram to my Food Diary and got 200 Cals. Screen capture below. Everything worked fine and 200 Cals is what I would calculate by hand: 2404 Cals divided by 3100g is 0.711 Cals per serving, times 281 grams is 200 Cals.
I'm not sure what happened when you did it. I do know some people have problems when choosing the Save and Log button. It is best to Save the Recipe; then go to your Food Diary and add the saved Recipe from there.
It's because she weighed the pot before it was cooked, so her serving size won't be accurate.
The OP indicates that she weighed the pot empty, then subtracted.So I spoke too soon. I weighed everything and entered into the recipe builder. I then weighed the pot. Then weighed it again with the stuff in the pot. After subtracting the pot weight, I got a total of 3100 grams.
I added up the weight of the ingredients and estimated the ingredients weigh 3400+ grams, so 3100g for the final cooked weight makes sense.
But she weighed everything raw... not cooked.
Yeah, I saw where OP indicated that she weighed the pot plus ingredients before cooking. I added the estimated weight from the list of ingredients as a sum check and got 3430g. I can't resolve that discrepancy without further input from the OP.
OP, was the chicken broth concentrated and you added water? That would throw my estimated ingredient weight off, if the added water was not enough to make a total of 8 cups.
Okay. I just realized that I didn't weight the broth. I just measured it since it was a liquid. Maybe that is where the problem is?
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I just got finished re-entering the recipe into the old builder and this time it worked. Instead of doing the save and log function, I entered it from my food diary page. Thank you to all the super sleuths who took the time to work through this problem with me! Here is to hoping that things go smoother with my one pot pasta that we are having for dinner tonight. 0
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