How to tell how many servings are in your recipe?

rori20
rori20 Posts: 61 Member
edited November 12 in Food and Nutrition
I made sukiyaki for my husband and myself last night. It's totally made from scratch with fresh vegetables and the broth is simple ingredients like soy sauce, mirin (coking sake), sugar and water. The only sukiyaki I can seem to find any nutritional information for on the internet is something called Edo Japan Sukiyaki and Tokyo Express Sukiyaki. Judging by the names, and the fact that the servings size is listed as "1 bowl" I'm assuming these are restaurants or pre-packaged versions. Even better is the fact that there's no weight equivalent for the "1 bowl", so I have no idea how to log what we ate last night. The aforementioned versions have around 600 calories per "bowl", and I REALLY doubt that my version has that many calories.

Is anyone familiar with how to determine how many servings of something are in a recipe you make yourself?

Replies

  • geicko
    geicko Posts: 151
    Some time ago, someone here recommended the following website:
    http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp

    Works great ! You enter the various food in your recipe then indicate how many portions/servings that is and boum ! it tells you all the secrets behind your dish :happy:
  • benmarcum
    benmarcum Posts: 132 Member
    i started using that one the other day. it is pretty great
  • BrendaLee
    BrendaLee Posts: 4,463 Member
    I log the individual ingredients when I make something.
  • rori20
    rori20 Posts: 61 Member
    I'll definitely check that site out, thank you! I have all my individual ingredients down, and the calorie count for each. I just have no idea how many servings it makes.
  • BrendaLee
    BrendaLee Posts: 4,463 Member
    I'll definitely check that site out, thank you! I have all my individual ingredients down, and the calorie count for each. I just have no idea how many servings it makes.

    That would depend on how many people ate it. :P
  • scotch74
    scotch74 Posts: 10 Member
    We made potato soup from scratch. I calculated each ingredient for the total recipe which was 2400 calories. I then took the whole pot and took out 1 cup servings to see how many I had. We had 12 cups of soup. 1 c =200 calories. Its just two of us and it is easy to make a large quantity and then freeze extra servings for later.
  • quinnybear
    quinnybear Posts: 243
    the number of servings is arbitrary. if you make a batch of chili and you eat 1/4 of the entire recipe, consider there to be 4 servings and just divide the total calories by 4 to get the amount in the serving you ate. if you eat 1/2 of the chili, consider there to be 2 servings and then divide it by 2. hell, you could say there are 100 servings in a small batch of chili and if you ate half of it, you ate 50 servings, but you still ate half the calories in the entire recipe.
  • IUChelle423
    IUChelle423 Posts: 197
    We made potato soup from scratch. I calculated each ingredient for the total recipe which was 2400 calories. I then took the whole pot and took out 1 cup servings to see how many I had. We had 12 cups of soup. 1 c =200 calories. Its just two of us and it is easy to make a large quantity and then freeze extra servings for later.

    I've used this idea before (taking out 1 C servings to see how many there were for the # of servings). Any thoughts about how to do that with spaghetti? It just doesn't stay in the cup so it's hard to measure, but I went to the trouble of calculating the exact calories for the recipe, so I'd like to properly measure the amount I eat.
  • heatherfutch
    heatherfutch Posts: 3
    Here's an idea, if you have a scale in your kitchen (esp one that will change the form of measurement) then weigh the ingredients (subtracting the amount for the pot of course) and if it does milliliters then divide by 237ml and that will tell you the number of cups in a recipe. Ive been searching the internet for an easy way to do this for deer chili this afternoon and haven't had any luck. If I were cooking it I would have no problem weighing it but I cant just go take over in the kitchen :( lol! I know many of these responses were posted quite a while back...has anyone else had any luck on new ways to determine the number of servings?? Casseroles and non liquid foods are pretty easy (some are anyways) but soups and items that cant be weighed are definitely stumping me a little still.
  • chezjuan
    chezjuan Posts: 747 Member
    When I cook recipe that can't be easily broken into servings (curries, soups, chili, etc.), I generally target 4-6 servings of food (with servings being about 1 cup). I go back and adjust the number of servings to the actual number of cups/servings that I got out of the recipe if I need to update it after eating.
  • treehugginpam
    treehugginpam Posts: 1,129 Member
    Under the "Food" tab there's a "Recipes" section. Just input all of your ingredients, put in what you plan for a serving size to be, and MFP will figure it out for you. For example, whenever I make a recipe I will just measure out one cup of what I made (or whatever I want the serving size to be) equally into individual bowls, see how many servings that makes, input it into the recipe I've created on MFP, and there you have it. It figures it all out for you. I love that feature. :smile:
  • cindybpitts
    cindybpitts Posts: 213 Member
    Soup..measure how much the soup weighs in the pot ,then subtract weight of empty pot.( Example 10lbs of soup only)convert to ounces (16 oz in a pound) so 16 oz x 10lbs = 160. Pour a ladle of soup in a bowl. Weigh bowl of soup and then subtract weight of empty bowl (10 oz soup only)..divide 160 by 10= 16 servings
  • annacole94
    annacole94 Posts: 994 Member
    I use the recipes section here under the food tab. I approximate how many servings there are - either what the recipe says, or if I know we usually split it into 4, then it's 4. If you made that recipe and split it evenly with your husband, you put 2 servings in the recipe and log 1. If you split it another way, you can log different servings to make it work. Or you log the whole recipe as 1 serving and log fractions appropriately.

    I don't weigh most foods. I'm losing at my desired rate, and it's just not necessary for me to start weighing my soup pots to establish if it's 150 cal/cup or 160 cal/cup in my homemade soup.
  • mjbnj0001
    mjbnj0001 Posts: 1,266 Member
    annacole94 wrote: »
    I use the recipes section here under the food tab. I approximate how many servings there are - either what the recipe says, or if I know we usually split it into 4, then it's 4. If you made that recipe and split it evenly with your husband, you put 2 servings in the recipe and log 1. If you split it another way, you can log different servings to make it work. Or you log the whole recipe as 1 serving and log fractions appropriately.

    I don't weigh most foods. I'm losing at my desired rate, and it's just not necessary for me to start weighing my soup pots to establish if it's 150 cal/cup or 160 cal/cup in my homemade soup.

    Yes.

    Logging everything is onerous enough. When you've got individual things with obvious sizes and/or weights (e.g., "chicken breast, 6 oz.," or "oatmeal, 1/2c uncooked") then it's easy to post each thing.

    With big recipes, I input the ingredients accurately. I made up a batch of pressure cooker beef stew the other night, and just now finished assembling a chicken-barley slow cooker stew (I guess it's winter stormy stew week, LOL). For the beef, I figured 16 servings, for the chicken 12, and let MFP do the math. It's sufficiently accurate, and the bathroom scale keeps the whole thing honest and on track.
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