Help me log lentils!

HASWLRS

I have a recipe for "The Best Lentil Salad, Ever" and it calls for 8 oz. of dried lentils. I used green lentils and I weighed my starting amount before I cooked them. The recipe says it makes 4 servings. It also says a serving is 114 g. That is assuming that lentils double in size when cooked because 8 oz. is 226 g x 2 =453 g/4 = 114 g (rounding). The problem is, there are way more than 4 servings of 114 g in the bowl. 114 g is roughly 1/2 cup when weighed out....not very much for 316 calories worth, according to the recipe! What would you do?

janejellyroll

When I am cooking beans, I weigh them dry and add that value to the Recipe Builder. I then base my servings on the weight of the overall finished dish, not the cooked beans themselves.

MsChewMe

OP, please share your recipe. I’m have lentils and am in need of a new way to serve them.

lynn_glenmont

Without knowing what else is in the salad (e.g., is there a dressing made with oil?), we can't tell what's going on, but absent other calorie-dense ingredients, 316 calories sounds closer to the energy in 114 g of dried lentils than the energy in 114 g of cooked lentils.

Susieq_1994

I'm not exactly understanding the problem here. Are you referring to an online recipe that tells you the nutrition information per serving and trying to log each ingredient in your diary? What I would do for a recipe:

Go to recipe builder, add name of recipe and number of servings. Then, add the total of ingredients, for example:
- 100 grams of lentils, raw (Link to USDA lentil calorie info, both boiled or raw: https://www.google.com.sa/search?q=lentils+calories&oq=lentils+calories&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j69i60.9071j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
- 100 grams of onions, raw
- 50 grams of tomatoes, raw

... And so on. Then, the recipe calculator divides the recipe up for you automatically, depending on the number of servings you entered.

Hope this helps!

snowflake954

I can buy cooked lentils in a can. It gives me 92 calories for 100g. Check that against what you're getting.

HASWLRS

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

Without knowing what else is in the salad (e.g., is there a dressing made with oil?), we can't tell what's going on, but absent other calorie-dense ingredients, 316 calories sounds closer to the energy in 114 g of dried lentils than the energy in 114 g of cooked lentils.

snowflake954 wrote: »

I can buy cooked lentils in a can. It gives me 92 calories for 100g. Check that against what you're getting.

I agree with both of you. 316 calories does sound like the amount in 114 g of dried lentils, not cooked.

HASWLRS

Thank you all for your responses. The problem with this recipe is that it gave the number of servings and it gave the weight per serving and the two didn't jive. It's probably more like 316 calories for 228 g of salad, not 114 g.

The recipe, if you are interested, is called "The Best Lentil Salad, Ever" and it is from Food.com

JeromeBarry1

"16069, Lentils, raw" 100 grams uncooked is 352 calories.
"16370, Lentils, mature seeds, cooked, boiled, with salt" 100 grams cooked is 114 calories.

It's too late now for this to do you any good, but you should know how many grams of ingredients you put in the pot. If you add water, know how many grams you add. If you drain off water, know how much you drain off. That's what the scale is for.

Using the old recipe builder, you can add everything that goes into the pot. That quoted phrase up there is the search term you need to use in the recipe builder to find the accurate lentil database entry.

Once you know how many grams of everything is in the pot, that number of grams is the number of servings that you tell recipe tool are in the recipe. When you log 1 serving, all the macro values are very close to or actually "0", because that's just one gram. If you spoon 347 grams of stuff onto your plate, adjust your diary entry to say that you had 347 servings of your recipe. If you have leftovers, tomorrow's 289 grams can be accurately logged as well.