? about weighing food

MyPsalm63

I just bought a kitchen scale. Do I weigh items (such as meat), before or after I cook it?

photojunkie28

After

rladd6421

meat - after; rice, oatmeal, grains - before

wolfchild59

Everything before. Meat is meant to be weighed in the raw state, 4oz of boneless skinless, chicken breast means 4 oz raw meat. You do this because when it cooks you lose water in the cooking process and it will be a different amount each time.

For example, if you start with 4oz of meat and cook it to a point where it's still moist and juicy inside, it will weigh about 3.25-3.5 oz.
Or if you cook that same 4oz of meat to where it's drier and a bit over cooked, it will weigh about 2.75-3oz.
Both amounts will be 120 calories.

Even if you use an entry for cooked meat, you can't be certain of the guideline that the entry is based off of as far as temp and length of cooking.

That's why whenever you see things involving meat advertised, there is the fine print at the bottom that says that weight is based off of pre-cooked weight.

I worked in a professional kitchen before, and everything is based off of pre-cooked weight. The only time we weigh stuff after it's cooked for any reason is portioning. e.g. you cooked 8oz of meat and want two servings out of it, but now it weighs 6.5oz, so each portion gets 3.25oz of meat.

obsidianwings

I usually weigh before. Doesn't matter to much though as long as you log it correctly, ie if you are weighing chicken after it has been roasted, it needs to be logged as roasted chicken not raw as they weigh differently so the info would be wrong.
Before is preferable for me, but sometimes if you are using up leftovers or whatever it can't be helped.