Finding calories on marinaded chicken (due to leftover marinade)

enaudnoslo

Ok, I am a math nerd. However, I am having problems with determining the exact amount of calories in marinaded chicken breast. I use McCormick marinades (especially "Smoky ranchero" and "backyard barbecue"). They call for 1/4 cup of oil (sunflower) and 1/4 cup of water (recipe says 2 Tbs of water, but I use 1/4 cup to make it thinner) for 2 lbs chicken breast. This makes an AWESOME chicken breast in my Air fryer. Now, when I marinade it, there is often much of the marinade left in the container that doesn't get eaten. I know how to enter it all in and apportion it into servings. However, what about the extra marinade that doesn't get eaten? What do you do? Just enter as prepared or somehow subtract the extra marinade? Am I trying to be TOO perfect?
Thanks for your thoughts.

mkm81

I usually just add some calories for oil, maybe a tablespoon or less? I figure I'd rather overestimate than underestimate.

apullum

You could weigh the marinade before putting the chicken in it, and then again after you take the chicken out. That would tell you exactly how much marinade was left over.

After you do this a few times, if the amount of marinade you eat turns out to be very small, then you might be okay with just estimating after that. Whether or not I would personally be okay with estimating would depend on how many calories of marinade I was likely to be eating.

dulinh

I have recently gotten into make ahead freezer marinades for chicken breast and have been wondering the same thing. I've been logging the entire amount even though I know there are calories left in the unused/uneaten marinade.

Larissa_NY

So, as a math nerd, you should be familiar with the concept of errors of approximation and standard deviations around point estimates. First, there's no way to ensure that the calories on the seasoning packets and the oil bottle are accurate enough to allow you to make the kinds of calculations you want to make, nor is there any way to disassemble the leftover marinade to accurately calculate the proportion of oil to spice to water in that leftover. Second, if you're using a food scale, it may or may not be accurate down to the gram. Third, unless you've got like two cups of marinade left, the number of calories in the leftover is going to be rounding error on the scale of calories you've ingested for the week, or possibly even calories ingested for the day.

In short: you can weigh and measure and assign numbers to things until the cows come home, but that won't make the numbers meaningful. Do it if it makes you happy; don't do it if it's going to make you neurotic. I'd just put in calories for the whole thing and call it a cushion against the times I'll invariable underestimate something.

enaudnoslo

Larissa_NY wrote: »

So, as a math nerd, you should be familiar with the concept of errors of approximation and standard deviations around point estimates. First, there's no way to ensure that the calories on the seasoning packets and the oil bottle are accurate enough to allow you to make the kinds of calculations you want to make, nor is there any way to disassemble the leftover marinade to accurately calculate the proportion of oil to spice to water in that leftover. Second, if you're using a food scale, it may or may not be accurate down to the gram. Third, unless you've got like two cups of marinade left, the number of calories in the leftover is going to be rounding error on the scale of calories you've ingested for the week, or possibly even calories ingested for the day.

In short: you can weigh and measure and assign numbers to things until the cows come home, but that won't make the numbers meaningful. Do it if it makes you happy; don't do it if it's going to make you neurotic. I'd just put in calories for the whole thing and call it a cushion against the times I'll invariable underestimate something.

Thanks. I agree and received a good giggle from your reply.