HELP!!! Do you weigh your meat cooked or uncooked?

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COOKED

Broke college boy doesn't buy gadgets for the sake of dieting. The meat counter weighs my meat raw so raw is how it's weighed.

I recently just read in an article, I believe Women's Health, advised readers to weigh after it was cooked.

Weigh raw. A sheet of butcher paper or plastic wrap helps keep your kitchen scale clean.

Raw - I'm not sure how you would even weigh things cooked unless you are just grilling/baking pieces of meat? I put chicken IN dishes, cook it with a bunch of other stuff, no way to weigh it by itself cooked.

But i have another Q, lets assume it is raw weight for chicken/meat - is that for frozen or thawed?

Good question, I usually weigh thawed, no idea what is the correct way though to be honest.

Typically, meat is weighed uncooked. Cooking is variable. The base amount is not. If you cooked two steaks of the same size, one rare and one well, the rare one is going to weigh more than the well done one. How much your meat weighs after cooking partially depends on how much you cook it. That's why meat is weighed before it's cooked.

interesting topic...

personally, I weight uncooked - if I have to split a meal e.g. spag bol, I use the recipe function and err on the side of caution

On the idea of cooking adding calories... I'm a biochemist... ive read various articles (including the one posted by ddoeren84). I suspect that this is a red herring... Calorific values are calculated using a bomb calorimeter - basically the test item is burned completely and the output energy measured. This is the maximum energy (calories) the item contains and may be done on food (per gram) in any state - cooked, raw etc. as specified for the test. Energy being more accessible in cooked food will not affect the maximum value the food contains. Rather, raw food energy is less accessible i.e. you are not getting the maxium energy out of the food. Living systems are not bomb calorimeters - not as consistent or efficient

Also as established, food loses water (weight) upon heating (cooking), therefore you get more energy per gram in cooked food, especially meat - unless it absorbs water (like rice) in which case you get less energy per gram. As long as you have the state in your search/results you should be fine - but I think raw is more accurate and probably reflects the max. energy (calories) you will get out of it.

Good luck everyone regardless and keep up the good work!

I work for a restaurant company and we do our nutritionals AFTER the food product/meal is in its final stage, as in completely cooked, assembled and ready to serve. As far as how much it weighs before it cooks, that is what we tell the customer they are paying for, what size they actually get, is different

For the most part, I weigh before I cook. Sometimes, I forget though, in which I then weigh after I cook and subtract .5 ounces. Example: If my goal is to eat 8 oz of chicken but I forget to weigh before cooking, I only eat 7.5 ounces of the cooked meat.

Come on, are you serious ?!

You calculate how much you are actually ingesting.

If the chicken breast was 300g raw, and u eat it raw, u calculate 300g
(Hopefully you wouldn't eat raw chicken, that's just mad!)

You always record and calculate what you are actually consuming, so weigh everything once cooked.

What? If it's 300g raw, but 200 g cooked, it will still have the same number of calories as the 300g raw, because the only thing it lost was WATER, which has zero calories. If you weigh it after cooking, you will be underestimating calories consumed. This is a big reason why people fail at losing weight while calorie counting, as this can account for hundreds of calories a day. My example is a difference of almost 200 calories alone.

Weigh everything cooked per my nutritionist and when I did weight watchers, the instructor said the same thing. For instance, a serving of pasta (any kind) or rice is by weight. Both weigh more after cooking. Meat usually shrinks during cooking, so you are getting less if you use a precooked weight, this is not good if you need specific amounts of protein. So yeah, weigh everything after cooking.

Weigh everything cooked per my nutritionist and when I did weight watchers, the instructor said the same thing. For instance, a serving of pasta (any kind) or rice is by weight. Both weigh more after cooking. Meat usually shrinks during cooking, so you are getting less if you use a precooked weight, this is not good if you need specific amounts of protein. So yeah, weigh everything after cooking.

If you read the previous posts in this thread, you would know that most of the weight meat loses during cooking is WATER WEIGHT. So you're not getting less food. In fact, because cooked meat is more readily digested than raw meat you're actually getting MORE calories. So weigh the food raw for the best estimate (and make no mistake, it's just a rough estimate).

I have always weighed mine cooked and obviously not a biggie as I have lost 42 lbs..so there ya go.

Im confused about weighing rice, If I cook a cup of raw rice it turns into a lot more than a cup of cooked, so when I weigh it out to eat I measure out a cup cooked. I cant imagine eating all the rice that came from 1 cup of raw rice.

Make less than 1 cup of dry rice?

Or portion up the cooked amount of 1 cup of dry rice. Regardless of how much it makes, if you divide it in 4, that would be the same as 1/4 cup dry rice.