Calculating Recipe Calories

HappyEight

For the most part I try and calculate out the weight of everything when I'm cooking dinner. However, this is very time consuming, especially when I'm making something like a curry and have to recalculate the recipe every time I make it because the ingredients and ingredient amounts change constantly. Does anyone have a work around or solution to this?

Derf_Smeggle

I make a vegetable beef stew that changes slightly (mushrooms/no mushrooms, rutabaga/turnips, more broccoli/more cauliflower) every time I make it. I modified it 5 different times until I realized a 300g serving (approx 2 ladles) was varying by 30 calories...

If I'm doing something drastically different with a recipe, then I'll key in a modified version. Otherwise I don't worry about it.

JohnnyPenso

HappyEight wrote: »

For the most part I try and calculate out the weight of everything when I'm cooking dinner. However, this is very time consuming, especially when I'm making something like a curry and have to recalculate the recipe every time I make it because the ingredients and ingredient amounts change constantly. Does anyone have a work around or solution to this?

This won't be a popular answer around here but my suggestion would be to just guess. I've logged dozens of recipes over the last year or so and I found that almost all of them fell within the same narrow range of calories per my typical 500ml serving so long as they were based on meat and vegetables. I've made several variations with different vegetables and they all came out pretty much the same in the end. Once I've made a recipe the only thing that would make it change dramatically is a dramatic change. Substituting sweet potatoes for potatoes or putting in less carrots and more rutabaga isn't going to make much difference in the end. Adding double the meat will or a can of full fat coconut milk will also but you have control over that.

Of course if you have the time do it right, but if you don't, just guess. You aren't going to be wrong by much. The most important thing in this case is to ensure you get the portion sizes absolutely correct. One thing I do sometimes is to write down all the ingredients but not enter them until a day or two later when I have more time. You can log an existing version in the meantime, then delete it and log the proper version later and if it results in a significant change in calories consumed, just make an adjustment in that day or the next day to compensate.