Weighing food

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jaca3642
jaca3642 Posts: 1 Member
in Recipes
I’ve been trying out using the option of making your own recipe section
When the so called meal is cooked , how long do you wait until you weigh out the cooked meal? I’ve noticed that the weight of the meal drops down steadily as the food cools down. Any recommendations?

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  • foreverslim1111
    foreverslim1111 Posts: 2,610 Member
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    I like to weigh meat cooked, before I eat it, and, with the food scale at the table, then after eating, weigh the bones and fat left overs. I subtract that so that I get an accurate weight of actual consumed meat. With most other foods, all cooking does is steam out water, so if you weigh it raw it will be the same calories as weighed cooked. Of course I don't do any of this at restaurants. People, generally, think this behavior is nuts - so I only do this weighing in private LOL. After while you get a feel for this and you can skip the before and after weighing for foods you eat often.
  • Cahgetsfit
    Cahgetsfit Posts: 1,912 Member
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    I weigh out all the raw ingredients and then add it all up. So for example, if I'm making a chilli - I weigh out my 500g mince, then let's say 1 can tinned tomato is 200g, then 1 can beans is 200g (i'm just guessing ok, like an example), then 1 onion was 100g, then the spices were whatever they were. So I then add up 500 + 200 + 200 + 100 = 1000 total grams.

    Then I cook it all.

    Then when I go to eat it I break it down into 100g blocks (so that 1000 grams is now 10 serves of 100 grams). So I'll eat 3 serves of it = 300g.

    It may not be 100% right and if I weigh the cooked food it might be different to what it was raw, but I figure it's close enough!!!
  • LyndaBSS
    LyndaBSS Posts: 6,964 Member
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    SueSueDio wrote: »
    I weigh the raw ingredients as I'm making the recipe and build it using that, not cooked weights.

    (Unless it's something like already-cooked chicken in a recipe, in which case I'll look for a suitable "cooked" entry in the database to add as an ingredient.)

    ^^^^ this is what I do, too
  • gallicinvasion
    gallicinvasion Posts: 1,015 Member
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    If I’m meal-prepping, I usually let it cool before putting the finished dish in the fridge anyway. So around 20 min after finishing the dish (still warm but not steaming), I will weigh it, put the lid on, and put it in the fridge. More accurate than weighing it right after its been on the stove or in the oven. Might still be a few grams off with moisture release, but I don’t sweat that.
  • puffbrat
    puffbrat Posts: 2,806 Member
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    I weigh it right before eating, so it will still be warm. @gallicinvasion's method is probably more accurate, but weighing the final meal while warm hasn't hindered my weight loss so far.
  • BurningSkies2018
    BurningSkies2018 Posts: 64 Member
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    I weigh the ingredients prior to cooking. Especially so when it comes to raw meat.

    Not because I don't know if there's a drastic difference, I just find it easier as I'm getting everything together.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,979 Member
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    It depends on whether I'm serving it right away. I let it cool as much as makes sense before weighing, for the purpose of determining the weight of a serving. I know what you mean about the weight of the finished dish dropping as it cools (although if you keep a lid on it, it doesn't do it so much). Definitely weigh after cooking for determining serving size -- even with the cooling/weight-drop factor, it's generally going to be much closer than assuming that the weight of the finished dish equals the sum of the weights of the raw ingredients (obviously, the effects of cooking on the weight of the raw ingredients will depend on what the ingredients are, what the cooking method is, etc.)
  • jeannalyn1227
    jeannalyn1227 Posts: 14 Member
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    Such a great question! I just purchased a scale and it should be here in a few days. My first couple of weeks all I did was focus on calories, now I'm easing my way into nutrition and weighing my foods. Slow and steady as I have a very long way to go.
  • sefajane1
    sefajane1 Posts: 322 Member
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    I wait until the food is cold, with the container lid off. Then I weigh the container, subtract the weight of the container (I make a note of this weight before I put the food in) and the result goes into the serving size box i.e., if it weighs 1234g then that's 1234 servings. When I dish out my portion to eat I just weigh it and add that into my diary as a serving size i.e., 260g portion gets entered as 260 servings.
    I hope that makes sense?

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