Explain Recipe Measuring like I'm 5

LittleChipin

Idk why I'm getting so confused by this. I know I need to use the recipe builder for things like soups but I'm confused. If I'm making soup, do I weigh all the ingredients raw, cook, then weigh it all cooked in grams? Like this?
With made up numbers:
Before cooking soup weight 1500g
After cooking soup weight 1400g
So 1400g is total of servings so if I eat 330g of soup, that's 330 'servings'. How do we account for cooked food losing moisture like meat? Wouldn't I be eating more calories if everything entered is raw weight? I'm so confused lol also random but how the heck do we measure, weigh, and log rice?! If anyone is kind enough to explain it like I'm 5 with an example equation I'd appreciate it so much

AnnPT77

I'm not going to use real numbers, but will use fake numbers is a realistic-like example.

What you said is right, for best accuracy: Weigh the ingredients raw, and put the raw weights into the recipe builder. There are various ways to think about the number of servings, but the one I usually use is the one you said: Weigh the finished dish in grams, put the number of grams into the number of servings, ignore MFP's "did you really mean that huge number" sort of message, and save it that way. Then, when I eat it, I weigh the portion I'm going to eat (before further heating/cooking, if it's something that needs to be warmed up) and log the number of grams in my portion the a number of servings.

Generally, it will be more accurate to weigh things raw. Let's use pasta as an example, but with partly fake numbers.

Let's say I'm going to cook some red lentil pasta. The package (US) gives weight per their theory of serving, which is usually 56 grams. I weigh out 56 grams of dry pasta, log the 56 grams of dry pasta, cook the pasta (during which it absorbs a bunch of water). In real life, I don't know how much it weighs cooked, and it can vary a bit depending on how much water it absorbs. Let's say it weighs 123 grams cooked.

The cooked weight in that case doesn't matter. Water was absorbed in the cooking, but water doesn't have calories. Maybe a teensy bit of starch or something from the pasta ended up in the cooking water (and took a few calories with it), but I'm not going to worry about that. The number of calories hasn't increased by adding water to its weight. Other than that trivial "maybe starch in the water" thing, the calories in the 123 grams of cooked pasta are the calories that were in the 56 grams of dry pasta that I weighed and logged.

Here's a (fake numbers) example going in the other direction. Let's say I roast a whole eggplant. I don't usually add oil when I roast one whole. I trim the stem or whatever, then weigh the whole raw eggplant. I note the number of raw grams. Let's say that's 472 grams. I roast the eggplant. When it's done, it has lost a bunch of water. The water it lost has zero calories. Maybe a little bit of juice leaked out and is stuck (dried out) to the pan. The juice would've had a tiny number of calories, but not enough to worry about, so I ignore that.

Usually, when I roast a whole eggplant, I slice or chunk it up, eat some, refrigerate the rest for later use cold or re-warmed. To set up for that, I weigh the whole roasted eggplant before I cut it up, let's say it's 267 grams.

Then I cut it up, and put a slice of 93 grams on a sandwich or whatever. That would be a portion that is 93 divided by 267 (fraction is 93/267) of the cooked eggplant, which is 0.348 (which is rounded here but I use all the digits on my calculator) of the cooked eggplant. I then log 0.348xxxx (i.e, xxx is all the other digits on my calculator) times 472 of raw eggplant in my diary, which is 164.4 grams of raw eggplant.

Here again, a lot of water was lost (no calorie impact), a little juice was lost (tiny calorie impact so I don't worry about it), so I log the raw weight. When I eat more of the cooked eggplant later, I do the same thing as in the paragraph above. Probably a little more water or juice will have changed in the refrigerator through evaporation or leakage, but I'm not going to worry about it because the effect is small.

It's a little more complicated if (say) broiling meat or something, because that can lose fat in addition to water, and fat does have quite a few calories in small amounts. I don't eat meat, but my impression from reading others' posts here is that most people assume the fat was not lost, and log somewhat more calories than was actually still in the cooked meat. A few, under some circumstances seem to skim the fat from the broiling pan, weigh that, and subtract it. Since I don't eat meat, I don't know how meaningful that difference is in practice - it probably varies depending on cooking method and how fatty the meat is. This may be a case where sometimes it's best to use a cooked weight entry in the database, say for something like bacon that can lose quite a bit of fat.

There are other more complicated cases, too (like if I sliced the eggplant before baking and put oil on the slices, but still ate only part of what I cooked at a time. I can explain what I do about that if you want me to, but I'm hoping you will be able to read what I wrote above and absorb that before I try to make it more complicated.

Key points: Water is a major thing gained or lost in cooking. It can be lots of water or very little, depending on the thing being cooked and the cooking method. Water doesn't have calories, whether gained or lost in cooking. Weighing raw is more accurate for those things because the widely variable amount of water hasn't been lost yet.

I hope that makes sense

LittleChipin

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Here's a (fake numbers) example going in the other direction. Let's say I roast a whole eggplant. I don't usually add oil when I roast one whole. I trim the stem or whatever, then weigh the whole raw eggplant. I note the number of raw grams. Let's say that's 472 grams. I roast the eggplant. When it's done, it has lost a bunch of water. The water it lost has zero calories. Maybe a little bit of juice leaked out and is stuck (dried out) to the pan. The juice would've had a tiny number of calories, but not enough to worry about, so I ignore that.

Usually, when I roast a whole eggplant, I slice or chunk it up, eat some, refrigerate the rest for later use cold or re-warmed. To set up for that, I weigh the whole roasted eggplant before I cut it up, let's say it's 267 grams.

Then I cut it up, and put a slice of 93 grams on a sandwich or whatever. That would be a portion that is 93 divided by 267 (fraction is 93/267) of the cooked eggplant, which is 0.348 (which is rounded here but I use all the digits on my calculator) of the cooked eggplant. I then log 0.348xxxx (i.e, xxx is all the other digits on my calculator) times 472 of raw eggplant in my diary, which is 164.4 grams of raw eggplant.

Here again, a lot of water was lost (no calorie impact), a little juice was lost (tiny calorie impact so I don't worry about it), so I log the raw weight. When I eat more of the cooked eggplant later, I do the same thing as in the paragraph above. Probably a little more water or juice will have changed in the refrigerator through evaporation or leakage, but I'm not going to worry about it because the effect is small.

It's a little more complicated if (say) broiling meat or something, because that can lose fat in addition to water, and fat does have quite a few calories in small amounts. I don't eat meat, but my impression from reading others' posts here is that most people assume the fat was not lost, and log somewhat more calories than was actually still in the cooked meat. A few, under some circumstances seem to skim the fat from the broiling pan, weigh that, and subtract it. Since I don't eat meat, I don't know how meaningful that difference is in practice - it probably varies depending on cooking method and how fatty the meat is. This may be a case where sometimes it's best to use a cooked weight entry in the database, say for something like bacon that can lose quite a bit of fat.

There are other more complicated cases, too (like if I sliced the eggplant before baking and put oil on the slices, but still ate only part of what I cooked at a time. I can explain what I do about that if you want me to, but I'm hoping you will be able to read what I wrote above and absorb that before I try to make it more complicated.

Key points: Water is a major thing gained or lost in cooking. It can be lots of water or very little, depending on the thing being cooked and the cooking method. Water doesn't have calories, whether gained or lost in cooking. Weighing raw is more accurate for those things because the widely variable amount of water hasn't been lost yet.

I hope that makes sense

Thank you so much for this detailed explanation. I really needed it! I think I understand what you're saying, that a recipe counts for calories as a whole, cooking doesn't change the caloric content in a weighed portion in grams. Also I really liked you giving me an 'equation' with the eggplant. Sometimes I do just that with veggies or large portions or meat, and needed to know how to factor in raw weight vs cooked. Weigh raw, weigh cooked, weigh cooked portion divided by cooked weight, multiplied by raw weight. So let's say I have 200g raw chicken, and then cooked weight is 127g. I weigh out 90g of cooked but I would log the raw chicken entry for 141.7g?

AnnPT77

LittleChipin wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Here's a (fake numbers) example going in the other direction. Let's say I roast a whole eggplant. I don't usually add oil when I roast one whole. I trim the stem or whatever, then weigh the whole raw eggplant. I note the number of raw grams. Let's say that's 472 grams. I roast the eggplant. When it's done, it has lost a bunch of water. The water it lost has zero calories. Maybe a little bit of juice leaked out and is stuck (dried out) to the pan. The juice would've had a tiny number of calories, but not enough to worry about, so I ignore that.

Usually, when I roast a whole eggplant, I slice or chunk it up, eat some, refrigerate the rest for later use cold or re-warmed. To set up for that, I weigh the whole roasted eggplant before I cut it up, let's say it's 267 grams.

Then I cut it up, and put a slice of 93 grams on a sandwich or whatever. That would be a portion that is 93 divided by 267 (fraction is 93/267) of the cooked eggplant, which is 0.348 (which is rounded here but I use all the digits on my calculator) of the cooked eggplant. I then log 0.348xxxx (i.e, xxx is all the other digits on my calculator) times 472 of raw eggplant in my diary, which is 164.4 grams of raw eggplant.

Here again, a lot of water was lost (no calorie impact), a little juice was lost (tiny calorie impact so I don't worry about it), so I log the raw weight. When I eat more of the cooked eggplant later, I do the same thing as in the paragraph above. Probably a little more water or juice will have changed in the refrigerator through evaporation or leakage, but I'm not going to worry about it because the effect is small.

It's a little more complicated if (say) broiling meat or something, because that can lose fat in addition to water, and fat does have quite a few calories in small amounts. I don't eat meat, but my impression from reading others' posts here is that most people assume the fat was not lost, and log somewhat more calories than was actually still in the cooked meat. A few, under some circumstances seem to skim the fat from the broiling pan, weigh that, and subtract it. Since I don't eat meat, I don't know how meaningful that difference is in practice - it probably varies depending on cooking method and how fatty the meat is. This may be a case where sometimes it's best to use a cooked weight entry in the database, say for something like bacon that can lose quite a bit of fat.

There are other more complicated cases, too (like if I sliced the eggplant before baking and put oil on the slices, but still ate only part of what I cooked at a time. I can explain what I do about that if you want me to, but I'm hoping you will be able to read what I wrote above and absorb that before I try to make it more complicated.

Key points: Water is a major thing gained or lost in cooking. It can be lots of water or very little, depending on the thing being cooked and the cooking method. Water doesn't have calories, whether gained or lost in cooking. Weighing raw is more accurate for those things because the widely variable amount of water hasn't been lost yet.

I hope that makes sense

Thank you so much for this detailed explanation. I really needed it! I think I understand what you're saying, that a recipe counts for calories as a whole, cooking doesn't change the caloric content in a weighed portion in grams. Also I really liked you giving me an 'equation' with the eggplant. Sometimes I do just that with veggies or large portions or meat, and needed to know how to factor in raw weight vs cooked. Weigh raw, weigh cooked, weigh cooked portion divided by cooked weight, multiplied by raw weight. So let's say I have 200g raw chicken, and then cooked weight is 127g. I weigh out 90g of cooked but I would log the raw chicken entry for 141.7g?

Yes!

There's always a little approximation in these things, but it's alllll estimates anyway. Close estimates that are easy/practical is the way to go, in my world.

Hobartlemagne

Its tedious, but you can divide all portions while the meal is hot so all evaporation is equal.
Just to be fussy, with soup I usually divide solids for each portion with a slotted spoon, then follow up with the liquid.

duskyblue

You can also just decide how many servings to divide a batch of cooked food into and then calculate how much to give yourself per serving. (I find this approach more intuitive when cooking for a family or batch cooking for freezing in equal portions).

So you'd...
1) enter the recipe and assign a number of servings
(no need for confusion about raw vs cooked at this point; just use raw weight entries for raw ingredients you chuck in the pot and cooked weight entries for any pre-cooked items you add)
2) once the food is cooked, measure its total cooked weight
3) divide by the number of servings; this tells you how many grams to give yourself per serving.

If the calories look too low or too high for my day, I adjust the number of servings (and change how much I dish up for myself accordingly).

Also, I find it helps to have the weights of my pots and pans listed on a card in the kitchen. Then I can weigh a whole pot/pan with whatever I've cooked still in it and just subtract the weight of the pot to get the total weight of the food. This is probably super obvious (but it didn't occur to me until I read a suggestion on MFP ).

LittleChipin

[/quote]

Yes!

There's always a little approximation in these things, but it's alllll estimates anyway. Close estimates that are easy/practical is the way to go, in my world. [/quote]

When entering a recipe, it asks for servings right away. Do you just guess a weight in grams, and then change it once you have the cooked weight? Also I noticed whatever I build in the recipe builder, it shows each serving is 1 or 2 calories (servings entered was 1952 or 1250). Is that right?

AnnPT77

Truthfully, it's been a while since I entered a recipe, so I don't remember whether I edited in the servings after. But that should work.

Because I rarely pre-log, but log after eating instead, I think I'd usually enter the whole recipe after making it and weighing it.

In fact, I rarely follow others' recipes exactly, but rather tweak details while I'm cooking, and for sure enter some multi-serving things as recipes after I make them because I winged it while cooking, keeping notes on scrap paper as I cooked.

I'm a flake!

Pre-logging is more typical around here, I think, so I hope someone who does pre- enter recipes (with total grams as number of servings, which is also common) will answer that part better than I can.

Apologies!

Yes, the calories for a one-gram serving look low, but it has kept more digits behind the scenes, so when I eat 522 servings, the math on calories and nutrients works OK.

springlering62

I’m lazy, and even as OCD as I am about logging, I don’t take it to this degree.

I might make tomato soup:
1 box creamy tomato basil 400 calories
1 big ‘ole can diced tomatoes 245 calories
1 package sliced Italian chicken sausage browned with no oil 400 calories
Pinch of herbs de Provence

I enter it all under meals as one item, 1045 calories total

My ladle is a one cup ladle. I know I’ll get 8 scoops with it, so a serving is 2 scoops. If they were bigger scoops today, there’ll be less tomorrow.

I’ll recall the meal and change portion to “.25” and log it.

Each serving is about 262 calories.

Big deal if it was .28 or .22. It all averages out in my tummy eventually, right?

Same with a giant pan of mac and cheese that made 24 servings. Some are gonna be bigger some smaller but usually they’re pretty similar.

Voila done. Overthinking it just makes the process so much more…..ugly, time consuming and stressful.

Btw, if you have a Lidl nearby, their chicken sausage is terrific, and they’ve got several different flavors. The Italian is 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 and 80 calories for one the size of a hotdog. Sometimes I just grill them in the oven or on the stove til they burst open and stick one on a “bun” of lewis bread, with a little Dijon. Awesome protein-y snack for 120 calories.

TLDR: don’t get so immersed in the minutiae of “perfect” logging that you forget a lot of weight loss just comes down to being mindful of what’s going in your mouth.

AnnPT77

@springlering62, I agree with your general philosophy, but feel like what's stressful minutia for one is an easier autopilot process for another. Your method would be "think-y-er" for me than weighing ingredients and putting the total weight in the servings, and I think more stressful.

OP may roll one way, or another. I'm betting she can figure it out, find her personal sweet spot. Some people even get along great and succeed at weight management rough-logging, eyeballing/guessing at most quantities. Whatever works is plenty good enough.

springlering62

lol I think I confused the issue with my handy ladle.

Suppose I said I just ate 1/4 of the recipe.

nossmf

I'm with @springlering62, I figure out what an entire recipe is worth in calories, then estimate what percentage I ate of it and log that. One full apple, half a small pot of rice, two chicken strips which look about 3oz of meat each...

Speaking of rice, the OP asked about how to measure rice. Standard I have used for 15 years here in MFP is to measure it DRY, since different brands and methods of cooking absorb different amounts of water, resulting in different volumes. So I will measure out dry rice while the water is heating up, make the pot, and if I eat half the pot, I must have eaten half the rice. (Some days I get full on a third of the pot, other days I just keep going.)

AnnPT77

springlering62 wrote: »

lol I think I confused the issue with my handy ladle.

Suppose I said I just ate 1/4 of the recipe.

Nah. It's just a style and preference thing, I think. I just tend to robo-weigh and note everything, even quite a few things that don't have meaningful numbers of calories, just because for me that's easy and automatic. If I start thinking about "is this worth weighing", it takes up more mindshare for me than just weighing and noting, plus breaks my habit of weighing everything so I forget to weigh/measure things that actually matter.

Sometimes I also set recipe servings to 4 or 8 or something, if that makes the most sense to me in the situation, like if I have a lasagna that I'm going to cut in X pieces, put individual servings in the freezer. Seven frozen chunks, one eat-immediately chunk, 8 servings: Fine, close enough.

OP's question, as I interpreted it, was about how to do the "weigh everything" end of the spectrum, arithmetically speaking.

If that seems obsessive or too time consuming or any other negative thing to anyone, they probably shouldn't do it. Many people succeed without doing it. Me, I like metrics and home-based science fair projects. I'm a data geek in other ways, too, and don't feel even remotely obsessive or psychologically fraught about it. If I forget to weigh something, or forget to log something, I guess and go on without stressing. Sometimes, now deep into multiple years of maintenance, I skip logging altogether, occasionally for days at a time, unless I want to put a more constrained fence around reaching some goal. NBD.

Early on, I'm glad I went the precision route. My calorie needs are wildly different from MFP's or my good brand/model fitness tracker's estimates. I don't know why I'm not average, and don't much care. Because I logged fairly meticulously during loss and the first months of maintenance, I have a good handle on my real-life calorie needs, so can manage my weight now quite predictably in a variety of different conditions.

Different approaches work best for different people, and that's OK.