How to divide a homemade meal into servings?

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Replies

  • KinzieElise
    KinzieElise Posts: 584 Member
    The only times I've made something for more than 1 person I just estimated by the number of people eating + 1, because my dad eats more than the rest of us, then since I'm usually putting the recipe in after we eat, I estimate how many meals the leftovers create. It's messy and definitely not exact but it works.
  • ILiftHeavyAcrylics
    ILiftHeavyAcrylics Posts: 27,732 Member
    I am just cooking for me so I measure mine out into bowls or tupperware. I also don't make huge batches because I don't want things to go bad. So the most I make is 4 servings at a time. I divide it into four bowls and then it doesn't matter if it's 1 cup, 1.25 cups, or whatever because of the way the recipe builder is set up. Alternately I'd add the volume of the ingredients together to get a total volume amount (say 6 cups of soup). Then I'd put 6 servings in the recipe builder. That means that 1 cup=1 serving, so if I'm going to have 1.5 cups I enter 1.5 servings in my diary. Hope that made sense.
  • puggleperson
    puggleperson Posts: 740 Member
    Bumb! This has to be the most annoying processes when dieting. Frustrates the bejesus out of me!
  • Busymomshantell
    Busymomshantell Posts: 126 Member
    I would take a big bowl and a kitchen scale. Zero out the scale with the bowl ON it and pour all the sauce into the bowl Then you can divide it into ounces or cups. If it was for future meals (like for freezing) I would take lots of containers and pour a ladle full in each container by turn until it was dished out evenly.

    Hope that made sense......

    ^^^ THIS - this is what I do for a lot of things. If I am making a pan of potatoes with veggies or something. I put that it is 4 servings in the recipe and eyeball the division of the dish in the pan into 4 servings and each person gets one (my hubby is on here too) - and if I only take 1/2 serving or 1.5 servings I use those measurements. I weigh out as above and then fill each plate seperately on a zeroed out scale - tacos is a perfect example. I weigh out the meat in total - then add each ingredient onto the taco, zeroing out the scale before each new addition. Sounds like a lot more work than it really is - but gives a better idea to what I am actually eating :smile:
  • Busymomshantell
    Busymomshantell Posts: 126 Member
    Three ways to do it without weighing.

    1) Put it in as one serving, figure out what fraction you ate and log that. You made one pot of spaghetti, ate 1/4 of it, and log .25 servings.

    2) Look the pot, figures it should provide a certain number of reasonable size helpings, and put that in. One pot feeds four platefuls. You eat one plateful. Log one.

    3) Look at the pot, figure out how many people it will feed, and put that in. It should feed four people. You enter that. You eat about half of that (1/8th the pot) and log .5.

    For big recipes like a kettle of soup or stew that I'm freezing, I pour it into a half gallon measuring cup I have to get volume and go from there.

    If you find you are wrong on servings, you can adjust it after the fact. I find I'm pretty spot on.

    I do this for things I don't want to weigh - works out pretty good.
  • kmadki4
    kmadki4 Posts: 20 Member
    I measure everything with a food scale or measuring cups. The food scale is way more accurate and you end up eating a lot more than a serving if you only go by measuring cups. I can't imagine how much I'd overestimate if I eyeballed it.
  • newmooon56
    newmooon56 Posts: 347 Member
    I build the recipe in the recipe section of this site.

    It depends what the meal is then I decide what is reasonable. 200 calories? 400? If its a dinner- I can have 400-500 or so, depending on the day. So I will then decide this meal is X amt of servings so that it equals how many calories I want each serving to be. Example- the whole recipe is 1000 calories- I want to eat 500- Id say its 2 portions. If I want to eat 300- Id cut it closer to 4 portions. Hope that makes sense. Eye-ing your portion is probably the most tricky part.

    Lets say that makes 4 servings out of a casserole. I just divide (eyeball) the dish into 4 servings - take mine and stop there. I have had "one serving" - whatever the size- doesnt matter.

    I often want to know also- when it comes to big pots of stuff.

    What I have learned to do is listen to my body and eat a NORMAL amt. Eating like a monster is how we got here- start eating like a thin person and you will become one.
  • SouthernArt77
    SouthernArt77 Posts: 265 Member
    I thought maybe I could add how many ounces everything is and divide by 8 to see how many cups there are. Like, if I was using a pound of ground turkey and 6 ounces of tomato paste and 10 ounces of onion and 8 ounces of diced tomatoes, that's around 40 ounces of sauce, right? So it'd be about 5 cups?

    You can't compare ounces (weight) to fluid ounces (volume, as in cups).

    I do what others have mentioned and weigh my entire finished dish, then divide the total by how many servings I think I'll get out of it. I weigh that amount out into my bowl/plate. I usually switch my scale from ounces to grams because it's just easier to divide. Hope that helps!
  • Mediumjen1985
    Mediumjen1985 Posts: 1 Member
    Okay, so, making spaghetti tonight. I'm wondering how do I divide this into servings. It seems quite impossible to do unless I go through the entire pot and measure how many cups are in it. Is there any other way?

    I thought maybe I could add how many ounces everything is and divide by 8 to see how many cups there are. Like, if I was using a pound of ground turkey and 6 ounces of tomato paste and 10 ounces of onion and 8 ounces of diced tomatoes, that's around 40 ounces of sauce, right? So it'd be about 5 cups?


    Does it work like that?

    Hello sorry I'm a little late to see this I always homemade everything so for me I also struggled with the aspect of figuring out why my full Hazel nut spread at a 1858 calories and 14 carbs and 7 fats . Wad going to work out at one portion, espically as you made to but a unit in. This is the way I do it.
    I calculate the whole recipe in my meals for instance
    The nuts
    Coconut oil
    Sweertner or sugar
    And cocoa powder as the full amount for the jar I wish to prepare. Then it's all in there way over one portion. So I take a calculator then I divide the 1858 calories by the amount of serving say 20 serving in my case as I made a full jar of chocolate spread. That then give me a 10g serving a single amount calories of 92.9 calories. So next I go back onto my meal serving after saving the original full calories amount, add the meal you made, however this time we are going to add our divide till we see the 92.9 or 93 calories to get the full nutritional value. So now from the calculator and my rubbish maths I press. 0.05 this gives me 93 calories per 10g serving and serves 20 people.

    If I did a spag bol
    I would divide my main by the amount of people
    To get the portion size then I just turn the calculation of 0.4 if its 4 people or 0.5 if its 2. Using calculator is easiest the turning that into a fraction by Google. Another easy way is to calculate whole number for instance 50g mince each for four people is 200g 8 fresh tomatoes for 4 people is 1 tomatoes 4 carrots is 1 Carot 2 onions is 1/2 onion each and so forth herbs and spices are not that important as contain very few calories and carbs. That the easiest method.

    Good luck 👍
  • vanmep
    vanmep Posts: 406 Member
    I weigh the whole thing and put the number of grams as the number of servings ie: 576 servings of soup. Then when I dish out my bowl of soup I can weigh it and enter 100 servings (grams) of soup.