Top tip for family 'one pot meal' recording

littlelexical

I keep seeing people saying they are struggling with recording accurately what calories they consume with family meals - especially the 'one pot' variety where everyone has a different portion size (think bolognaise, chilli, curry, stew etc)
But it really doesnt have to be so difficult, honest - and all it requires is one more step (that includes a large, clean bowl - a serving bowl if you will!)

1)Build your recipe in MFP for EVERYTHING you put in your one pot meal & cook
2)When cooked, put your serving bowl on your scales & tare it back to zero - pour in the entire cooked meal
3)Note the weight & put this in as your 'serves' in grams in the MFP recipe builder.
4)When dishing up the meal, dish yours up on the scales - however many grams you serve yourself, is your 'portions' of the recipe you made.

**To make this easier, if I have a cooked recipe weight of 2kg - i put portions in as 40 & put in the recipe title '50g portions' - then so long as i have a number with a zero on the end, it is super easy still to log my food & im not playing with tiny numbers & the macros come out more accurate on the recipe builder too**

This can also work with mixed meals - where you have one main part & then top up with carbs and salad - think sloppy joes, hamburgers, tacos, burritos, enchiladas etc.

1)Build your recipe in MFP for EVERYTHING you put in your one pot meal & cook
2)When cooked, put your serving bowl on your scales & tare it back to zero - pour in the entire cooked meal
3)Note the weight & Check how many 'serves' it is meant to give (ie. my store bought taco mix <for those lazy days> comes with 10 tacos - so i want the mixture to spread easily amongst them)
4)Enter the 'serves' into the 'serves' box in the recipe builder
5)Divide the weight by the number of serves & enter this into your title (one serve equals 62g)

Make up your mixed meal on your scales (which you would be for logging all your salads etc anyhow) and never stress that you have eyeballed something wrong again.


Now i know there are a few flaws - dishes heavier than what your scales can provide, people thinking this is just taking weighing too far, having to use the scales in front of your family, etc etc etc. I know it isn't a fix for everyone - but hopefully it is a great start for some.

HTH.

Alatariel75

This is how I do it, but I have gone one step further and have a note on my fridge with the weight in grams of my most used cookware
! I don't even have to put it into a new bowl, but pop the whole lot on my scale and subtract the weight of the pot (be careful that your scale can take the heat!)

littlelexical

Amazing idea @Alatariel - I hadn't thought of that - but i have plastic top scales & they would shrivel! lol... New reason to get the glass top scales i have been eying off maybe?

meshashesha2012

I don't bother with weighing these things for the most part because especially for things like stews and chili im using prepackaged/frozen stuff from trader joe. A serving size is based on the size of my bowl and I know how many servings I can get from each container I make stuff in.

Mojoman02

Great idea!!! I will have to try it!! Thanks so much for sharing!

Lizajayne23

I have marked each of my pots, pans, and bake ware with the weight right on it. That way, I just pop it on the scale and can see how much to subtract. I have a stainless steel cover on my scale but since it's plastic under that, I place a potholder on the scale and tare it first.

littlelexical

Fantastic idea @spalissa!

rjdunn87

I've started doing this recently and it's been working for me! Doesn't take a huge amount of extra effort and it takes the guesswork away.