Estimating calories in 牛肉水餃, boiled beef dumplings

pestopoli

Hi all! Been in China around a year now. I gave up logging for a long while because everything became such a wild guess, but I'm trying to get back on track now!

A staple of my diet is boiled dumplings. I get them frozen from fields online grocery. It's not crazy healthy, but it's fast and filling and easy to portion!

Problem is, I've entered every pinyin, hanzi, and english variation of 牛肉水餃 (niuroushuijiao and "boiled beef dumpling") into the database, and it seems like every entry varies wildly from the last.

Usually when I guess at a dish I didn't prepare, I look at a great number of similar items to see if there is a median range that people agree on - I rule out outliers that seem to high or low. But with beef dumplings, it's all over the place - literally from 75 calories per 100g to 775 calories per 100g, with no two people agreeing near each other. Anyone have any advice?

Thanks all, and happy eating!

baisha2875

Hi! Can you find a nutrition information on the pack of your dumplings? I found that many food, which sell in supermarket here in China have nutritional information written on. About dumplings calories, it depends how they have been made it, with a lot of beef fat, or with a lot of vegetables- calories can change widely. I would do like that: 1. Take one dumpling from the bag. 2. Weight the dumpling. 3. write down the weight. 4. separate dumpling from meat and dough.( You have to sacrufice one dumpling for the experiment). 5. weight the dough and meat. 6. write down the numbers. 7. Find in MFP database dough calories. 8. Find in MFP grinded beef meat. (here you should decided about fat procentage of meet). 9. Since you know how many calories in one dumpling, say dough and meat calories put the numbers on your My meal. I hope, you can find thiw way not to difficult to do. Good luck!

pestopoli

Hi Baisha, so helpful! 謝謝

Yes, I followed your suggestions and weighed the dumpling in parts. There was 8 grams of beef and 20 grams of "dumpling dough". Now I have a working idea, assuming they didn't used very fatty or very lean beef.

Quick follow-up question: is dumpling dough in China usually made of rice or flour? 哈哈 I'm not sure :P

Thanks again for the idea!

baisha2875

Haha! You are welcome! Nice that you liked my idea. It was a first time here in MFP, when I ever suggested to someone. ^^ Dumplings in China usually made by weat flour ( rice flour have no gluten, so the dough will not stick to a dumplings shape). For dough you use only wheat flour and water, I don't know about salt.. In general, you don't use salt in dumpling dough, because the soup and meat already salty. You can find dough calories .. Yeah, I've looked myself in MFP, I couldn't find it, so many doughs, but not for dumplings. I found a recipe. http://www.chow.com/recipes/28052-basic-dumpling-dough. I suggest, just take any pizza dough recipe, will be fine for counting. I found one, but I don't know how to share here. Pizza Dough 100 grams/Calories 282 ,Sodium 479 mg
Total Fat 3 g Potassium 0 mg
Saturated 0 g Total Carbs 54 g
Polyunsaturated 0 g Dietary Fiber 2 g
Monounsaturated 0 g Sugars 0 g
Trans 0 g Protein 9 g
Cholesterol 0 mg
Vitamin A 0% Calcium 0%
Vitamin C 0% Iron 0%

Then 20 grams of dough will be about 56 calories.Hmm a bit high, maybe this recipe have used olive oil or sugar.. I have checked my one dough calories contents. So, I get per 20 grams of dough - 38 calories. 8 carbs, 0 fat, 1 protein. Sorry, I wrote it in a messy way.