Easy way to figure out serving sizes in homecooked meal

Claremoak

I am sure there is a thread somewhere that already describes this, but is there an easy way to figure out a "serving" in a meal I cook at home? I don't always follow a recipe, but I know what I have used and most of the time I weigh out my ingredients, unless it is a full package of something. Typically it is a meal for my husband and I and usually leftovers for later. Short of measuring out the entire pot of food (such as a pot of chili), how do I accurately know how many servings are in the dish? Right now, I guestimate, based on how much each of eats and how many containers of leftovers I have. (I measure my serving, but my husband doesn't).

wannabeskinnycat

You can create a recipe and then portion it out. I do this all the time for stews, soups etc. I weight each ingredient as normal, cook and then depending on the final dish I’ll either weigh it or make portions. Soups etc are easier to weigh and I often batch cook separate portions of a dish to freeze.

When you recreate the meal you can amend the ingredients and weights so you’re able to improvise etc.

puffbrat

Claremoak wrote: »

I am sure there is a thread somewhere that already describes this, but is there an easy way to figure out a "serving" in a meal I cook at home? I don't always follow a recipe, but I know what I have used and most of the time I weigh out my ingredients, unless it is a full package of something. Typically it is a meal for my husband and I and usually leftovers for later. Short of measuring out the entire pot of food (such as a pot of chili), how do I accurately know how many servings are in the dish? Right now, I guestimate, based on how much each of eats and how many containers of leftovers I have. (I measure my serving, but my husband doesn't).

I weigh the whole thing. The final weight of the food in grams = number of servings. Then I weigh my portion and the number of grams of that is the number of servings I enter in my food diary. For meals that will remain in a pot or pan, I weigh the empty container before cooking and then subtract that from the total weight to get the weight of the food. The only time this doesn't work is if I use my large crockpot which will weigh too much for my food scale. In those cases I just guesstimate number of servings (usually 6-8).

MelanieCN77

For one pot meals I weigh the whole finished product and subtract the pot weight, and enter that as servings. So I make a pot of chili, it's 2500g, pot is 750g, I put in 1750 servings on the recipe. Then I can serve myself whatever I like and log precisely what I ate.