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How to determine calories, carbs, etc. in 1 cup of a recipe?

JasmineSchmidts
JasmineSchmidts Posts: 17 Member
edited February 9 in Food and Nutrition
I know how to enter recipes and figure out the nutritional content from them, but only by serving. I want to figure out how to figure out how much is in 1 cup of this soup recipe. If I split it between 6 people, it's 295 calories per serving, but I don't know how much a serving is. Can anyone help me out? Sorry if this is a stupid question!

1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
5 medium carrots, peeled and chopped (1 3/4 cups)
1 medium yellow onion, chopped (1 1/2 cups)
4 stalks celery, chopped (1 1/4 cups)
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth (3 - 15 oz cans)
1 cup water
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
1/4 tsp celery seed, finely crushed*
2 bay leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 cups uncooked wide egg noodles

Replies

  • F00LofaT00K
    F00LofaT00K Posts: 688 Member
    Adding the recipe and figuring out how many total cups there are is the easiest way to do it.
    btw: that looks delicious.


    Do you know what size pot you're using? A quart is 4 cups so if you're using a 4 quart pot and it's full, there would be 16 cups in it.
  • luckydays27
    luckydays27 Posts: 552 Member
    when I do this, I enter the ingredients to the MFP Recipe, then cook the food. I weight the food after cooked. I then figure out what one cup weight. Divide the weight of one cup into the weight of the food as a whole and enter the number of servings in MFP. Once you have that, you know exactly how many cals would be in one cup serving of the recipe.

    For Example: If your soup weighed 4 lbs after cooked. There are 16 oz in 1 lb so the soup weighs 64 oz, The raw ingredients totaled 2500 cals. 1 cup serving weighs 8 oz. if there are 64 oz total and 8 oz in a serving, there are 8 servings in your soup. 2500 divided by 8 servings mean each 8 oz (or one cup) is 312.5 cals.

    That is how I do it anyway. Not sure if there is an easier way.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,132 Member
    when I do this, I enter the ingredients to the MFP Recipe, then cook the food. I weight the food after cooked. I then figure out what one cup weight. Divide the weight of one cup into the weight of the food as a whole and enter the number of servings in MFP. Once you have that, you know exactly how many cals would be in one cup serving of the recipe.

    For Example: If your soup weighed 4 lbs after cooked. There are 16 oz in 1 lb so the soup weighs 64 oz, The raw ingredients totaled 2500 cals. 1 cup serving weighs 8 oz. if there are 64 oz total and 8 oz in a serving, there are 8 servings in your soup. 2500 divided by 8 servings mean each 8 oz (or one cup) is 312.5 cals.

    That is how I do it anyway. Not sure if there is an easier way.

    This is pretty much how I do it, except after weighing the whole recipe, I would figure out the weight of a serving by dividing the total weight by the number of servings I want the recipe to be, rather than using a volume measurement like a cup. And then I always include the size of the serving in the name of the recipe, e.g., "Chicken soup (serving = 220 g., approx 1 cup)" because the recipe feature on MFP doesn't let you select a unit of measurement for the serving size, so if you don't record that info somewhere, you won't know later what 1 serving is.
  • JasmineSchmidts
    JasmineSchmidts Posts: 17 Member
    Thanks everyone, you've been extremely helpful!
  • F00LofaT00K
    F00LofaT00K Posts: 688 Member
    when I do this, I enter the ingredients to the MFP Recipe, then cook the food. I weight the food after cooked. I then figure out what one cup weight. Divide the weight of one cup into the weight of the food as a whole and enter the number of servings in MFP. Once you have that, you know exactly how many cals would be in one cup serving of the recipe.

    For Example: If your soup weighed 4 lbs after cooked. There are 16 oz in 1 lb so the soup weighs 64 oz, The raw ingredients totaled 2500 cals. 1 cup serving weighs 8 oz. if there are 64 oz total and 8 oz in a serving, there are 8 servings in your soup. 2500 divided by 8 servings mean each 8 oz (or one cup) is 312.5 cals.

    That is how I do it anyway. Not sure if there is an easier way.

    This is brilliant... and such common sense. Why didn't I think of this before??? Thanks!
  • corgicake
    corgicake Posts: 846 Member
    Tally calories for the works and figure out what chunk of the whole a single cup would be after cooking (ignore the beginning amount - soups lose water like crazy).
  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,751 Member
    I don't worry about end serving size - I just put in the whole recipe for however many servings I want. After cooking I divide it evenly in to that many servings regardless of size. Sometimes the same recipe can yield different amounts, so I prefer to weigh it not use cups.
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