How to Properly Weigh Meats

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  • MrsPinterest34
    MrsPinterest34 Posts: 342 Member
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    I weigh all meats after cooking and I continue to lose weight. I have been doing this since last year. I think I burn enough calories from walking to help with any minor calculation errors.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,721 Member
    edited February 2018
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    StevefromMichigan wrote: »
    Actually, I did a test this evening, where I weighed 6 raw chicken breasts, cooked them, and weighed again. On average, the raw chicken breasts weighed 1.3 to 1.5 times more than after it was cooked. For the particular one I ate, I would have under-logged by almost 80 calories if I had applied the raw caloric content to the cooked chicken breast weight.

    Sometimes I will eat two in a day, one for lunch and one for dinner. My logging would be under by 160 calories on that day if I applied the raw meat numbers to the cooked weight.

    Be careful for chicken breasts as there is a big difference between frozen boneless chicken breasts with added solution and, for example air chilled skin on chicken.

    There are actually separate entries in the USDA database and the amount of post cooked reduction in weight is substantially larger for the chicken that has been frozen after sucking in a good amount of solution to plump up, I mean preserve the quality of, the meat.
  • StevefromMichigan
    StevefromMichigan Posts: 462 Member
    edited February 2018
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    PAV8888 wrote: »
    StevefromMichigan wrote: »
    Actually, I did a test this evening, where I weighed 6 raw chicken breasts, cooked them, and weighed again. On average, the raw chicken breasts weighed 1.3 to 1.5 times more than after it was cooked. For the particular one I ate, I would have under-logged by almost 80 calories if I had applied the raw caloric content to the cooked chicken breast weight.

    Sometimes I will eat two in a day, one for lunch and one for dinner. My logging would be under by 160 calories on that day if I applied the raw meat numbers to the cooked weight.

    Be careful for chicken breasts as there is a big difference between frozen boneless chicken breasts with added solution and, for example air chilled skin on chicken.

    There are actually separate entries in the USDA database and the amount of post cooked reduction in weight is substantially larger for the chicken that has been frozen after sucking in a good amount of solution to plump up, I mean preserve the quality of, the meat.

    Good to know. I usually try to buy the fresh ones for just that reason. When I would buy the frozen ones, it seemed like they would shrink to half the size after cooking :)
  • Nikion901
    Nikion901 Posts: 2,467 Member
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    sosteach wrote: »
    The most accurate is after but I found that to a bit of a pain sometimes so I read that meat tends to be 25 % less after cooking. So I will log a 3 ounce portion of cooked chicken as 4 ounces.

    Yes - meat loses moisture and fat melts out during cooking .... case in point ... I roasted 2 chicken leg quarters today: they were bone-in, skin on and were roasted so that the fat drippings were separated from the meat by a layer of root vegetables. The raw chicken weighed 2.26 pounds ... or 36.16 ounces. The cooked chicken weighed 23.30 ounces or just shy of 1.5 pounds. That amounts to a 35.56% loss due to evaporation and fat drippings. ... that's a lot!

    In this case, it I was able to find database entries for it both raw and roasted. However, I chose to use the roasted entries and weight without the bone but with the skin on. The bigger roasted thigh weighed 8 ounces with the bone, 6 ounces without the bone. ...

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