Weigh before or after cooking??

Luckee_me

I actually know the answer to this question! Weigh ingredients before you cook them. During the cooking process all that changes is the amount of water. The ingredients reduce in weight but also concentrate.

If you have any cooking questions I would be happy to help. I have a degree in culinary arts and worked in restaurants for 10 years.

Not to mention you've lost the equivelent of 2 4th grade children ...holy smoke!!!! If you lead I will follow

This

myfitnessval

i weigh before for meats. pastas usually tell you on the packaging if its a dry or cooked measurement so that helps a ton.

terrie53

I have allways wanted to no the same thing

BaconMD

Wow, old post back from the dead.

AsellusReborn

It depends how you input, and this is something I only recently - and unhappily - realized. If you pop in the specific brand to match the nutrition label - like I buy market pantry frozen chicken breasts - the nutrtition facts are for UNCOOKED meat. So I have to weigh it before cooking...which I wasn't doing. Nutrition labels are for products in the package as is.


There are however entries in the DB for -cooked- versions. If you're using those you use the cooked weight. Make sense? Don't enter raw weights if you pick a cooked entry in the database - and vice versa, don't enter a cooked weight for a raw value.

EricNCSU

I always weighed before because everything I eat is low fat. This week I bought my 7% ground beef, made a burger weighing out 4 oz. Just for the heck of it I weighed it after it was cooked and it was 3.25 oz!! :noway: Doesnt sound like much but for me 1 oz of food is a lot at the end of the day.

So now I weigh after cooking!!:flowerforyou:

This is wrong though because the nutritional information is based on the raw weight so you are underestimating what you eat. You are eating 4 oz but only logging 3, so you ate 100 cal (example) but only logged 75.

ALL meats are weighed raw. All you lose when you cook (in theory, yes I know fat drips out) is water, so the nutrition is unchanged, but the weight is less, so you have to go with the higher/raw weight.

MetilHed

I always weighed before because everything I eat is low fat. This week I bought my 7% ground beef, made a burger weighing out 4 oz. Just for the heck of it I weighed it after it was cooked and it was 3.25 oz!! :noway: Doesnt sound like much but for me 1 oz of food is a lot at the end of the day.

So now I weigh after cooking!!:flowerforyou:

This is wrong though because the nutritional information is based on the raw weight so you are underestimating what you eat. You are eating 4 oz but only logging 3, so you ate 100 cal (example) but only logged 75.

ALL meats are weighed raw. All you lose when you cook (in theory, yes I know fat drips out) is water, so the nutrition is unchanged, but the weight is less, so you have to go with the higher/raw weight.

AND It's hard to get accurate info because how much water is lost can be dependent on how/how long you cook it. 4 oz burger cooked rare will weigh more than well done, but still has the nutrition of 4 oz of ground beef.

Unless otherwise specified on the packaging, weigh foods raw.

TrinaJ11

I always weigh before cooking. I only weigh after if the serving size on the package says (x amount of oz's) prepared or cooked.

delilah47

It depends on what you select from the database. I usually start with fresh or raw and enter it into my recipe. Calories will be correct and your servings will be accurate that way. Products which are raw, say raw chicken sausage has the calories on the package for raw, not cooked. So if the package has a serving size of 2.5 oz, if you wait and weigh it after you cook it, you will be eating much more than the 2.5 oz of uncooked sausage.

atomiclauren

I have had an issue with this - for example, we eat a lot of salmon and I use the USDA nutrient database.

There are entries for raw and cooked and per ounce or gram the difference is negligible (5 oz cooked Atlantic salmon = 292 calories vs. 5 oz raw Atlantic salmon = 295 calories).

Obviously I'd love to use the after-cooking-weight!

blihota

if all that is cooking off is water, then why befrore?? water is zero calories, so why weigh it, as if it were something else, like chicken, or steak?? seems like its a markiting thing, so custemers cant say anything if there food doesnt weigh excatly right?? can you elaborate??

blihota

....

ValerieMartini2Olives

Almost always weigh before. Nutrition content gets altered after cooking. But, if you cook a piece of chicken or steak or something, you can find the cooked content on MFP.

NinjaJinja

I weigh before. There's simply no way to weigh it after if you're making something like, oh, a chili or casserole. It's all cooked together. How do you know exactly how much cheese vs how much chicken you have without totally destroying it? It's a totally futile endeavor in a chili.

So glad to know that I've been doing it right this whole time. Thank you culinary people!

Cyriatan

Depends. Most of the time, before. But, it depends whether the meal is for one or more regarding certain foods. If for myself only, I weigh anything before because I'll be eating all of it myself. This is very useful when eating something like rice or pasta. If shared, is more difficult, I'm not eating a whole cup of uncooked rice even if I make that for my whole family, and you can't put jut 1/4 of uncooked rice on your diary because you simply just don't know how much water may have it soaked in or anything. In this cases I weigh the food after being cooked and I try to search for cooked versions on the database (cooked rice, cooked pasta, etc.) But I try as much as possible to weigh before cooking and then I add the oil used, I think is far more accurate.

KenosFeoh

I always look for the "cooked" value (as in "roasted chicken breast"). I usually find it. I'm not always the one doing the cooking here, and when I am, I'm cooking for the family, not just for myself, so I don't know exactly which piece of meat I'm going to end up with.

corneredbycorn

Weight is before being cooked unless otherwise specified.

I weigh all food prior to cooking because I have found that to be quite a bit more accurate than after, especially since things tend to switch from 150g to 1 cup, which is too vague and not specific enough. I tend to favor grams over any measurement.

corneredbycorn

if all that is cooking off is water, then why befrore?? water is zero calories, so why weigh it, as if it were something else, like chicken, or steak?? seems like its a markiting thing, so custemers cant say anything if there food doesnt weigh excatly right?? can you elaborate??

It's not some marketing scheme. It's just how food has always been measured because it is way more accurate.

4oz raw meat = 400 calories
4oz raw meat, that has been cooked down to 3oz, but weighed raw = 400 calories
4oz raw meat, that has been cooked down to 3oz, but weighed cooked= 300 calories

Meat, especially, is always weighed raw unless otherwise specified. The reason for this is that a 4oz hunk of meat is still going to have 400 calories even if it cooks down to 3oz. The problem is that if you enter it in as 3oz because that's what it weighed after you cooked it, you're under calculating the calories by 100. That adds up. Furthermore, not everyone cooks meat to the same level. A 4oz steak cooked rare is going to weigh a lot more after cooking than a 4oz steak cooked well, but both steaks still have the same nutritional content.

This holds true to any food item in which liquid is either removed or added through the cooking process.

milliesmith220

weigh before cooking

Brandon74

I always weigh my food before cooking it. All the research I have read regarding this says to weigh it before.