Weighing meat correctly

insideoutsocks7

Is it better to weigh the meat before or after cooking? Does it depend on the type of meat? I love dark meat bone-in chicken and I feel like a small portion keeps me satisfied for a long time but it seems like it would be so difficult to get an accurate reading of the caloric content.

jean133mjg

In your Food Diary entries, you can look up either cooked or raw information. Use a food scale to weigh the meat as it is raw or after cooking if that's how you want to log it.

Duck_Puddle

Raw is typically more accurate as the degree to which meat is cooked will affect the amount of moisture remaining (and therefore the weight). If you can weigh it raw, do so. Choose a database entry for “raw” meat (or the info on the package is also typically for the raw product).

However-it’s not always possible to use raw weight. Perhaps you’re having a portion of a large roast, or something where bones add to the complication and it’s simply more feasible to weigh the cooked portion you’re actually going to eat. In that case, use a database entry for the correct meat cooked as close to the way you cooked it as possible (usda usually has entries for roasted, braised, boiled, grilled, etc.).

In general-if you can weigh it raw before you cook it (and then subtract our bones later), that’s ideal.

kshama2001

For bone-in chicken, I get a weight for the cooked chicken and then subtract the bone when I'm done.

Unfortunately, the "verified" green check marks in the MFP database are used for both user-created entries and system entries. To find system entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and plug that into MFP.

lemurcat2

kshama2001 wrote: »

For bone-in chicken, I get a weight for the cooked chicken and then subtract the bone when I'm done.

Unfortunately, the "verified" green check marks in the MFP database are used for both user-created entries and system entries. To find system entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and plug that into MFP.

This.

I eat a lot of bone-in chicken and use the cooked entries from the USDA (you can find them as kshama explains above). For a breast if it's not a fancy dinner I just pull off the amount I want and weigh it. For a thigh or leg I'd weigh the remainder after eating the meat.

Weighing it as cooked is totally fine so long as you make sure you are accurate as to how it is cooked. The good entries will specify (as Duck_Puddle notes).

It's also not always possible to avoid some guesswork with meat -- I get mine from a local farm and I'm pretty sure the pork chops and loin have more fat (heritage breed) than supermarket on average, and the beef is often leaner (but ground beef won't specify like the supermarket does). I do my best to estimate but also just am as consistent as possible, and then if I find I'm not getting the results I want I can adjust.