Best way to figure out calories in stew?

WarmDontBurn

I am making beef stew and I always find measuring stuff like that hard however I really want stew..lol.
My issue with the recipe generators and stuff is they want per serving and I have no idea what a "serving" is. I weigh everything in grams. Also while I may eat 300g my daughter's and husband do not. So how do I know how many servings are in each pot?

In the past I have weighed everything that went in and then taken the grams of all the added items and the calories of all those items and put them in MFP has a food. Since I don't make it the same way twice it's tough but doable. That's how I do spaghetti and stuff like that.

With stew though I have it in the crock pot and added 3 cups of water -- so that adds to the weight. Also because stuff absorbs and all that I am not sure if the end result will be close?
Am I over thinking this too much - probably yes but I am trying so hard to stick to my calories it's either get it as close as possible or skip the stew.

How do you figure out multi ingredient recipes like soups/stews?

jjpptt2

With things like stew and chili, I add all the ingredients to the recipe tool, then estimate number of cups the recipes make... then set 1 serving = 1 cup. Then I log the number of servings (cups) I eat.

I'm not sure there's a good way to do it, but this has worked well enough for me, and it seems to have a good accuracy-to-effort ratio.

serindipte

Weigh the pot before you start.

Weigh out your ingredients as you add them, then insert them into the recipe builder.

Cook.

Weigh the end result and subtract the weight of the pot.

Set your serving size in MFP to the total number of grams your stew weighs.

Weigh your serving. If you eat 300g, then your serving size is 300 of 1g.

WarmDontBurn

serindipte wrote: »

Weigh the pot before you start.

Weigh out your ingredients as you add them, then insert them into the recipe builder.

Cook.

Weigh the end result and subtract the weight of the pot.

Set your serving size in MFP to the total number of grams your stew weighs.

Weigh your serving. If you eat 300g, then your serving size is 300 of 1g.

I have done this in the past as well but it becomes a pain with my crockpot because of it being so heavy my scale bogs out from almost it's weight alone.
Might have to transfer pots or something for more accuracy!

EDIT to add -- I wonder if I can still fix this.
If I add up everything that is in there now and get a calorie count for it all, could I then weigh it when it's done? Knowing that there are say for example 3000 calories in the whole pot and the contents weigh xxx then that would get me closer then knowing the weight before cooking? is that right?

serindipte

If you're going to be saving it as a leftover in a container, you could use that container to get the total weight of the stew rather than the crock.

WarmDontBurn

serindipte wrote: »

If you're going to be saving it as a leftover in a container, you could use that container to get the total weight of the stew rather than the crock.

Thanks!! I am not sure I ever figured out stew before but the whole pot is under 2000 calories so not too bad!! I will weigh it once it's done and then enter that weight with a calorie count of 1,985 to give me the per gram amount.
A little more work but totally worth it. Thank you so much!!

serindipte

It's how I figure out my spaghetti sauce calories and I was delightfully surprised to realize it wasn't nearly as calorie-dense as I'd have thought.

ritzvin

[1] If you don't expect to lose a lot of water (and the pan+contents will overload your balance): weigh everything going in including water. Sum up the total weight.
If the pan isn't very heavy and the total weight won't overload the balance, then tare the pan beforehand and weigh the final stew (+ pan), subtract off the pan weight to get the final weight.

[2] In the recipe, set the servings to the number of total grams (or grams divided by 100).

[3] Weigh your serving when you ladle it into your bowl and use the weight as the number of servings.

cwolfman13

Use the recipe builder.

mjbnj0001

I just made a batch of pressure-cooker beef stew the other night, and had the same problem. I accurately input all my ingredients into the recipe builder, and determined the number of resulting bowls (servings) as being 16 (3 people x 2 bowls x 2 nights plus 3 freezer portions plus 1 lunch leftover). Voila. MFP does the portion math. In actuality, measuring true weights is more accurate, but I grew up in the slide rule age - I don't push the precision beyond being "defensibly reasonable" LOL.

ritzvin

I have the same issue with soup since the crockpot+contents overloads the balance, and I keep it in the crockpot in the fridge. I've considered transferring to a lighter large container which might also be less annoying to take in & out of the fridge.