When do you weigh you meat?

derek2680

Do you use the ounces it weighs when raw or do you cook it then weigh it? I personally weigh it after it cooks because it shrinks down a bit and when I use my grill or foreman grill much of the fat drips out. Just curious as to what others do.

Superchikanthem

I weigh before everything I cook is before its cooked I weight it.

bigboimav

i also weigh before.

smilingalltheway

after

wolfchild59

Always weigh prior to cooking.

4oz of raw, boneless skinless chicken breast is 120calories. You cook it, one of two things happens:
1. you cook it perfectly and it's moist and juicy in the middle still, it now weighs about 3.5oz because of the water is lost while cooking.
2. you overcook it and it's now sorta dry and tough, it now weighs about 3 oz because it lost a lot more water.

If you weigh outcome 1, you'll be entering 105 calories for that 120 calories of chicken breast.
If you weigh outcome 2, you'll be entering 90 calories for that 120 calories of chicken breast.

Yes, some fattier meats will lose some of the fat while cooking, but it's still always meant to weighed raw since there is no way to account for how much or how little of anything is actually going to cook out of the meat. If you order a 1/4 pound burger at a restaurant, you are getting a burger that weighed 1/4 of a pound before it was cooked, because that's just the standardized way that meat is weighed and nutritionally recorded.

YoungDoc2B

After it's cooked..

sgv0918

after because I don't now how much of a roast i may want

smilingalltheway

what if your recording the calories for grilled chicken or grilled steak not raw

longtimeterp

Friday mornings

MeeshKB

I weigh it raw when I can, cooked when I don't have the option.

The important thing is that when you look up the food in the database, you choose the appropriate entry. If your chicken breast is raw, choose "boneless, skinless chicken breast - raw" or the like. If it's already cooked, make sure you choose an entry for cooked chicken breast.

ETA: I totally expected to see some smart-*kitten* responses to the thread title. You guys are not living up to expectations! :bigsmile:

relucas81

Ideally before it's cooked as the nutrition labeling is based on pre-cooked weight.. However if you have cooked meat in front of you, still go ahead and weigh it as something as minor as that is not going to derail your weight loss goals

Flowers4Julia

Seems you could weigh it raw or cooked, just use the correct listing in the database

(BTW - in this database, use the food listings that do NOT have an asterisk before them. The info is from the USDA nutrient database and will have both raw and cooked...it'll be much more accurate for you as well!)

wolfchild59

what if your recording the calories for grilled chicken or grilled steak not raw

Then you're estimating even more than we already do with calories since you have no idea how the person cooked their meat or what the "official" doneness was on the already cooked meat that the calories were entered for.

Looking at my original example, what if, knowing that the chicken breast was 120 calories worth of meat, I cooked it to outcome 1 results, then entered that it was 3.5oz of meat for 120 calories.
Then you cooked some chicken breast to outcome 2 results, weighed it, found you had 3oz of meat but used my entry for grilled chicken.
You'd then lower the amount to 3oz instead of 3.5oz, since that's how much you have, and end up recording 103 calories instead of 120.

Sharon009

After its cooked.

redheaddee

I always weigh after. If I am getting 3 ozs of calories, I want 3 ozs of steak, dammit!

Inebriated

Always weigh it before.

NikkiSixGuns

Doesn't matter as long as you use the correct calorie count per weight measure for whether it's cooked or raw and, if cooked, what cooking method was used.

I always use the raw weight because I feel it's more consistent.

RobynMWilson

I guestimate lol. I know I shouldn't but I'm lazy when it comes to certain things lol

tuffytuffy1

Friday mornings

:laugh:

Debby0904

Wolfchild is correct. It is before. I did some reading on that and rather than put raw meat on my scale I use a pre-weighed plate and deduct it. But no it isn't going to make that much of a difference if you are eating clean (chicken etc) foods.

wolfchild59

I think I'm going to try to find some time soon to make a video about this topic. The videos that people post for weighing vs measuring food and the drinking of two cups of water making you gain a pound always seem to resonate better.

My six years of working in a kitchen and trying to give food advice on how foods should be weighed prior to cooking and the professional reasons why always seem to just fall on dear ears (blind eyes) and it makes me sad to think of how many diaries are out there with underestimated calories.

Everything we do here is already a best guess scenario based on FDA guidelines allowing variances on labels and there being no way to ensure consistency with naturally raised/grown products. Why allow for even more discrepancies when it's really easy to just weigh prior to cooking instead of after.

Cooking a whole roast and you *have* to weigh after you say? Not true - just weigh the entire thing before cooking, then weigh it again after. Weigh the piece that you cut off to serve yourself. Using the pre-cooked weight and the cooked weight, then calculate how much of the overall weight your serving was and use that to get your calories.

*sigh* Sometimes I wonder why I try.

knightreader

i can't stop laughing about the title of this topic. thanks for making me smile!

daisiecpa

i weigh after cooked. i cook for me and my husband so it would be hard to separate my weighed portion before cooking. he sometimes eats more then me and i make extra so he can take lunch to work.

the calories are so confusing as it is. i do not know what is accurate all the time so i hope i am not too far off.

for example someone posted 4 oz chicken breast equals 120 calories. the chicken breast in my freezer say on the package 4 oz equals 100 calories. tonight my chicken thighs package says 4 oz equals 190 calories but nothing matched up on the data base so i just increased the chicken thigh meat to the equal the amount i calculated after weighing the chicken. also i bought another brand of chicken thighs and it said 3 oz equals 210 calories. that is a big difference. how do you know what is right?

mmtrnr

Before and after. For example, tonight I made steak tacos. The raw meat was 19.05 oz. After cooking it was 14.00. I ate 3.00 oz of the 14. With a little math, I can calculate what portion of the original package I ate: 3/14*19.05. The answer is how many ounces of the raw meat I ate. Then I divide by 4, since a serving size is 4 oz. That gives me the number of servings to enter into MFP.

Yes, it can be time consuming. But it works for me.

sharleengc

Serving size weight and calories are based on pre cooked weight. I weigh mine before I cook it... I used to cook my portions in a separate pan but then I took a few "after cooking" weights and now I can cook mine in the same pan and weigh it after but it is about a 2oz difference.

emtjmac

I just take use the weight that the supermarket printed so I guess it's a raw weight.

derek2680

Yeah, I figured I would get a few people who grabbed onto the weighing of the "their meat" haha. I thought about changing the title, but the thought of that action being done also made me laugh haha. Thanks for the replies everyone.

VelociMama

I also use raw weight.

monicalosesweight

(BTW - in this database, use the food listings that do NOT have an asterisk before them. The info is from the USDA nutrient database and will have both raw and cooked...it'll be much more accurate for you as well!)

Cool. Thanks for the advice.

Cathcandoo

Right before I eat it

jenmsu83

I always weigh it raw.