Rice...is it accurate to weigh before or after cooking?

xSanoura

I love wild brown rice, and I’ll measure a cup to cook. It makes quite a lot, so I’ll weigh a serving before packing it in my lunch(2oz). It seems so puny lol; is this the accurate way?
Im new to weighing and logging food, so any tips and advice will be greatly appreciated

ceiswyn

It's generally more accurate to weigh dry, because the amount of water added by cooking varies.

However, it's most important that if you weigh dry, you use an entry for dry, and if you weigh cooked, you use an entry for cooked.

(And it's also more accurate to weigh, with scales, than to measure by volume using cups)

cmriverside

Next time you make a cup of (uncooked) rice, when the batch is done weigh the completed/cooked rice. When I cook 45g (0.25 cup) of brown rice, it absorbs enough water during cooking to come to around 150g (1 cup, or over 5 ounces by weight) after cooking.

Generally an uncooked portion is 0.25 cup. Generally a cooked portion is 1 cup. So weigh your completed/cooked rice and divide by 4 for a single portion size.

BarbaraHelen2013

xSanoura wrote: »

I love wild brown rice, and I’ll measure a cup to cook. It makes quite a lot, so I’ll weigh a serving before packing it in my lunch(2oz). It seems so puny lol; is this the accurate way?
Im new to weighing and logging food, so any tips and advice will be greatly appreciated

You’re short changing yourself I think, by weighing your 2oz after it’s cooked as that really is a tiny amount! The 2oz (56g) portion refers to dried weight. It’ll absorb varying amounts of water, obviously, as it cooks. Personally, I use brown rice and I’ll weigh out 40g dry and boil it in a small pan. For me that’s plenty because I’m really short so it makes sense to me to reduce the ‘standard’ serving on things like pasta (of which I weigh 35g dry) and rice.

99 times out of a hundred I’m cooking separately from the family because I’m vegetarian and they aren’t, so it’s easy for me to do it this way. If you’re trying to portion yours out of a family cooked pot I appreciate it’s harder to be as precise.

The back of my brown rice pack actually says a serving is 74g (dry) which will produce 180g weight when cooked, if that helps any. But as has been said, whatever way you choose to do it, do make sure the entry you choose reflects the state of the food you’re weighing.

Pipsqueak1965

Yep - weigh dry - then your two ounces (or 50 grams approx.) is a reasonable serving. Its what I have for rice and pasta and I'm pretty small.

xSanoura

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

xSanoura wrote: »

I love wild brown rice, and I’ll measure a cup to cook. It makes quite a lot, so I’ll weigh a serving before packing it in my lunch(2oz). It seems so puny lol; is this the accurate way?
Im new to weighing and logging food, so any tips and advice will be greatly appreciated

You’re short changing yourself I think, by weighing your 2oz after it’s cooked as that really is a tiny amount! The 2oz (56g) portion refers to dried weight. It’ll absorb varying amounts of water, obviously, as it cooks. Personally, I use brown rice and I’ll weigh out 40g dry and boil it in a small pan. For me that’s plenty because I’m really short so it makes sense to me to reduce the ‘standard’ serving on things like pasta (of which I weigh 35g dry) and rice.

99 times out of a hundred I’m cooking separately from the family because I’m vegetarian and they aren’t, so it’s easy for me to do it this way. If you’re trying to portion yours out of a family cooked pot I appreciate it’s harder to be as precise.

The back of my brown rice pack actually says a serving is 74g (dry) which will produce 180g weight when cooked, if that helps any. But as has been said, whatever way you choose to do it, do make sure the entry you choose reflects the state of the food you’re weighing.

It really felt like i was doing something wrong because it was such a tiny portion yet it had 200+ calories! If im measuring wrong, the real calorie intake im consuming is probably alot lower .
Im still so confused. So if i WEIGH out the reccomended single serving from the bag to cook, do i still WEIGH the cooked rice and consume it? Sorry for so many questions

LyndaBSS

I weigh 1 cup of rice dry, then separate into 4 portions after cooking.

Note: I never use instant rice. I always use long cooking rice.

xSanoura

LyndaBSS wrote: »

I weigh rice dry, then separate into 4 portions after cooking.

Note: I never use instant rice. I always use long cooking rice.

I use brown wild rice(half brown/half wild rice) because i like the texture.
I boil a big portion and then separate and meal prep it for my work.

deannalfisher

xSanoura wrote: »

LyndaBSS wrote: »

I weigh rice dry, then separate into 4 portions after cooking.

Note: I never use instant rice. I always use long cooking rice.

I use brown wild rice(half brown/half wild rice) because i like the texture.
I boil a big portion and then separate and meal prep it for my work.

the recommended serving (2oz) is based on uncooked rice - so if you cook a batch - weigh out raw amount (i.e. 10oz or 5 servings) - then when its cooked - divide the cooked amount by 5 to get your cooked serving size. if you are weighing 2oz cooked - that is tiny

cmriverside

xSanoura wrote: »

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

xSanoura wrote: »

I love wild brown rice, and I’ll measure a cup to cook. It makes quite a lot, so I’ll weigh a serving before packing it in my lunch(2oz). It seems so puny lol; is this the accurate way?
Im new to weighing and logging food, so any tips and advice will be greatly appreciated

You’re short changing yourself I think, by weighing your 2oz after it’s cooked as that really is a tiny amount! The 2oz (56g) portion refers to dried weight. It’ll absorb varying amounts of water, obviously, as it cooks. Personally, I use brown rice and I’ll weigh out 40g dry and boil it in a small pan. For me that’s plenty because I’m really short so it makes sense to me to reduce the ‘standard’ serving on things like pasta (of which I weigh 35g dry) and rice.

99 times out of a hundred I’m cooking separately from the family because I’m vegetarian and they aren’t, so it’s easy for me to do it this way. If you’re trying to portion yours out of a family cooked pot I appreciate it’s harder to be as precise.

The back of my brown rice pack actually says a serving is 74g (dry) which will produce 180g weight when cooked, if that helps any. But as has been said, whatever way you choose to do it, do make sure the entry you choose reflects the state of the food you’re weighing.

It really felt like i was doing something wrong because it was such a tiny portion yet it had 200+ calories! If im measuring wrong, the real calorie intake im consuming is probably alot lower .
Im still so confused. So if i WEIGH out the reccomended single serving from the bag to cook, do i still WEIGH the cooked rice and consume it? Sorry for so many questions

The package is telling you that 1/4 cup (45g) is a single portion and it's giving you the calories for that. IT MEANS RAW/UNCOOKED.

If you are weighing out four portions raw (one cup of raw rice equals four portions) then that will still be four portions cooked, but it will absorb water so it's going to weigh more.

So either eyeball your four cooked portions (each is about one cup) or weigh the entire batch and divide it into four equal portions.

BarbaraHelen2013

xSanoura wrote: »

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

xSanoura wrote: »

I love wild brown rice, and I’ll measure a cup to cook. It makes quite a lot, so I’ll weigh a serving before packing it in my lunch(2oz). It seems so puny lol; is this the accurate way?
Im new to weighing and logging food, so any tips and advice will be greatly appreciated

You’re short changing yourself I think, by weighing your 2oz after it’s cooked as that really is a tiny amount! The 2oz (56g) portion refers to dried weight. It’ll absorb varying amounts of water, obviously, as it cooks. Personally, I use brown rice and I’ll weigh out 40g dry and boil it in a small pan. For me that’s plenty because I’m really short so it makes sense to me to reduce the ‘standard’ serving on things like pasta (of which I weigh 35g dry) and rice.

99 times out of a hundred I’m cooking separately from the family because I’m vegetarian and they aren’t, so it’s easy for me to do it this way. If you’re trying to portion yours out of a family cooked pot I appreciate it’s harder to be as precise.

The back of my brown rice pack actually says a serving is 74g (dry) which will produce 180g weight when cooked, if that helps any. But as has been said, whatever way you choose to do it, do make sure the entry you choose reflects the state of the food you’re weighing.

It really felt like i was doing something wrong because it was such a tiny portion yet it had 200+ calories! If im measuring wrong, the real calorie intake im consuming is probably alot lower .
Im still so confused. So if i WEIGH out the reccomended single serving from the bag to cook, do i still WEIGH the cooked rice and consume it? Sorry for so many questions

No, if you’re weighing out a single serving from your pack and cooking it, there’s no need to weigh it after as well. That way lies confusion, so I’m not surprised you’ve got yourself in a knot with it! Just make sure you get every last grain out of the pan! 😂

LAT1963

Most packages list the dry weight, so if you are using package statistics, weight before cooking is the most accurate way, especially with something like rice because the water content after cooking is likely to vary.

Rice, specifically, is also complicated by the fact it's calorie count changes (goes down, thank goodness) if you let it sit for a few hours before eating it, but this is so variable between cooking methods and strains of rice that you're best just to log everything according to the dry or freshly-cooked weight (I learned this on the side while on google-scholar looking for differences between koshihikari and calrose short-grain rice strains to see if they had different calories per weight). Has something to do with the bio-availability of the starch going down due to side-reactions as the cooked rice ages.

PS: avoid letting rice sit outside a refrigerator for more than 4 hours, it is prone to growth of bacillus ceruleus, which causes a 'food poisoning' of moderate severity. but it's just a risk, not a certainty.

poisonesse

Just weigh it raw. If you weigh it cooked, the weight can be different depending on how long you cooked it, how much water you used, etc. Since water doesn't have calories, you'll get the info you need, faster and easier, by just weighing it before cooking. But as has been said, do weigh it on a food scale, don't use a measuring cup, those really aren't accurate.

poisonesse

OH, and no, you don't weigh before AND after cooking! Just once and you're done.

kimny72

xSanoura wrote: »

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

xSanoura wrote: »

I love wild brown rice, and I’ll measure a cup to cook. It makes quite a lot, so I’ll weigh a serving before packing it in my lunch(2oz). It seems so puny lol; is this the accurate way?
Im new to weighing and logging food, so any tips and advice will be greatly appreciated

You’re short changing yourself I think, by weighing your 2oz after it’s cooked as that really is a tiny amount! The 2oz (56g) portion refers to dried weight. It’ll absorb varying amounts of water, obviously, as it cooks. Personally, I use brown rice and I’ll weigh out 40g dry and boil it in a small pan. For me that’s plenty because I’m really short so it makes sense to me to reduce the ‘standard’ serving on things like pasta (of which I weigh 35g dry) and rice.

99 times out of a hundred I’m cooking separately from the family because I’m vegetarian and they aren’t, so it’s easy for me to do it this way. If you’re trying to portion yours out of a family cooked pot I appreciate it’s harder to be as precise.

The back of my brown rice pack actually says a serving is 74g (dry) which will produce 180g weight when cooked, if that helps any. But as has been said, whatever way you choose to do it, do make sure the entry you choose reflects the state of the food you’re weighing.

It really felt like i was doing something wrong because it was such a tiny portion yet it had 200+ calories! If im measuring wrong, the real calorie intake im consuming is probably alot lower .
Im still so confused. So if i WEIGH out the reccomended single serving from the bag to cook, do i still WEIGH the cooked rice and consume it? Sorry for so many questions

Weigh it raw, then cook it. If it's all for you, I would just eyeball the portions. If there's a little more on Tuesday's serving and a little less on Wednesday's serving, it all evens out in the end. Otherwise, you can weigh it after you cook it, and divide the weight by 4. You might want to weigh it afterward if you are sharing it with someone else, or just like to be precise!

So let's say your package says a serving is 45g. You want to make 4 lunches. So you weigh out 45x4=180g of dry rice and cook it. If you weigh it after it's cooked, it's going to weigh more with the absorbed water. Let's say it now weighs 360g (I'm guessing). 360/4 servings = 90g cooked per serving. Math is fun

HoneyBadger302

I weigh raw/uncooked, and just divide out my cooked portions by eyeball - in the end, it'll come out to the total originally portioned out. If you're worried about the cooked portions being equal, use the uncooked for your calories, but then weigh the total cooked and divide evenly (just don't use that as your calorie number - use that portion of the uncooked number).

xSanoura

Thanks everyone! I knew something off, but I figured it’s just a step down from my normal huge portions. Haha, I’m going to get the rest of my rice.

OldHobo

Here's what I do.

1. Make an MFP recipe name "OldHobo's Rice, per ounce", entering dry uncooked rice along with other ingredients.
2. Weigh the cooked pot of rice and using my list of tare weights for cooking utensils, subtract the weight of the pot.
3. Set the recipe servings to equal the net weight of the finished dish in ounces.
4. Log the rice in My FoodDiary using ounces served as quantity.

cwolfman13

xSanoura wrote: »

I love wild brown rice, and I’ll measure a cup to cook. It makes quite a lot, so I’ll weigh a serving before packing it in my lunch(2oz). It seems so puny lol; is this the accurate way?
Im new to weighing and logging food, so any tips and advice will be greatly appreciated

The 2oz serving you're referencing is for dried weight. When I'm doing rice or quinoa or whatever I just used a "cooked" entry with a typical serving for myself being 100 grams.

Bradleys8299

Weigh everything raw/dry or as packaged unless the packaging says otherwise.

Clairin

I use 1/4 cup brown rice dry which makes maybe double volume once cooked. I scoop out either a 1/4 cup cooked portion and log that or, if I'm hungrier I scoop out the rest of the cooked rice with my 1/4 cup measure and log that then too. I log the cooked measure personally.

hesn92

I search for a cooked entry in the database and use that. Most accurate would be to weigh it dry, but weighing it dry would be too much of a hassle since I'm making a big pot of rice at once, not just my individual serving.