How should I account for oil/butter in some recipes?

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victorialanglinais
victorialanglinais Posts: 2 Member
in Food and Nutrition
So, a little background... I am from New Orleans and one of my favorite meals is New Orleans style BBQ Shrimp, which means cooked in tons of oil and butter with herbs and spices. I have a recipe that I've had for years but have not made in at least 10 years and with friends coming to town this weekend, I figured I'd dust off the recipe and cook that for our guests.

Well, the recipe calls for 1 cup of vegetable oil and 1 cup of butter for 2# of head-on shrimp. I know it seems like a lot, but once it's all cooked, you take the shrimp out of the pan/pot and there's still a ton of oil/butter mixture left in the pan - most all of it in fact. How do I calculate the calories of the oil and butter without saying 1 serving gets 1/4c of each? When I put in my recipe it told me the calorie count per serving was over 1100, which doesn't seem right if I'm not actually consuming all of the oil and butter. What's a New Orleans girl to do?!

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  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    The most accurate way would be to weigh the oil and butter in the pan pre-cooking and then weigh what's left after cooking and then log the difference. I'm personally not quite that...vigilant...and back in my logging days probably would have just chalked it up to a teaspoon or two actually being consumed.
  • victorialanglinais
    victorialanglinais Posts: 2 Member
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    lx1x wrote: »
    Measure the leftover oil/butter mix.. subtract from the recipe to get better calorie count..

    As I was scrolling through other posts, it occurred to me that I could measure it after the fact. Will definitely do that. (Doesn't help with knowledge before-hand, but hey, it's a special occasion and I'd eat it anyway!)

    Thanks for the logical, simple answer to my silly question!
  • westrich20940
    westrich20940 Posts: 878 Member
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    If this isn't something that you're making/eating a lot I wouldn't even worry about trying to figure it out honestly....it's one meal?

    Now, if it's a go-to potluck type thing then yeah do the reverse calculation method as suggested.

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