Tips for Weighing Food when Cooking for a Family

ladyzherra

Recently I have found a lot more success in weighing my food. However, I cook for my family and I notice that weighing some foods, like pasta or quinoa, is better done dry and seems impossible to track accurately because, for example, I cook all the pasta together rather than keeping my portion separate. With only four burners, I can't really keep my measured out foods separated. Also, dishes such as sauteed vegetables include olive oil for the pan, but I am not sure exactly how much gets into the veggies on my plate. Do you see the predicament?

How do those of you who cook for others get the best gauge on your food?

I realize that some foods can easily be weighed after they are cooked, but I need some tips for measuring all of those foods that can't be because they include a lot of ingredients or are cooked in large quantities to feed many.

Thanks!

Lietchi

You weigh the individual ingredients before cooking to know how many calories each dish contains (whether it's a 'dish' with one ingredient, for example rice, or several ingredients, like pasta sauce).
You weigh your dishes after cooking and weigh your own portion, and then you can calculate how many calories your portion has.

For cooking oil, I usually count it all unless I can see a lot of oil left in the dish and then I eyeball to lower the amount of oil in the recipe (be careful not to confuse cooking juices and oil, not all liquids left over after cooking are oil).

deannalfisher

For pasta/quinoa - weight your portion and the entire portion you are going to cook then figure out what percentage yours in and apply that to cooked weight

Ie you want 50g raw pasta and you cook another 150 for your family (total is 200g) - your portion is 1/4 cooked weight

So say cooked weight is 300g; your portion is 300/4 or 75g

guitargirl55

I am struggling with this right now too, so I am curious to see what others say. Right now I am counting all oil that goes into the pan as a part of recipes.

The best method I have found is to measure everything and add up all the calories before I cook it, then weigh the completed dish. I usually have to dump it into a different bowl to do this which kind of sucks. I divide total number of calories by the total weight to get the weight per unit. For example:

Calories of all ingredients added together: 2506
Weight of completed dish: 41.7 oz.

2506 cals/41.7 oz= about 60 calories per oz.

Then I call my BF to eat, and just weigh my own portion.

I would love a better way to do this if there is one! It is accurate, but a bit of a pain to track in MFP. I usually just put it in MFP as Quick Add Calories.