Calories from Cooking Oil

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mdandres
mdandres Posts: 15
in Food and Nutrition
Hey mfp'ers. I, like many of the users of this site, religiously weigh my food out on a scale to make sure I know exactly what goes into my body. I've been using cooking spray until recently but my food keeps sticking to the pan and recently made the switch back to cooking oil.

So my question is: when cooking with oil, is a significant portion of it lost during cooking? In other words, if I use 15mL of olive oil for 120 calories, am consuming close to 120 calories of oil or do i lose a significant portion (eg 30-40 calories worth)?

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  • betweenthesedays
    betweenthesedays Posts: 15 Member
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    Well, you might lose some with what might be left in the pan, but it's not going to be that much. Better to over-estimate than under-estimate. If you're having problems with sticking, try adjusting the temperature of your burner down. You can also sauté with water or broth.
  • Ctrum69
    Ctrum69 Posts: 308 Member
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    Depends totally on how you are using it.

    If you are tossing it on a salad, or tossing noodles in it, you are going to get most of it.

    If you are using it (or, butter) to lubricate the pan so you can fry something in it, you'll probably get not much at all. (this can be hard to tell, because usually whatever you are cooking is going to lose juice or fat into the pan anyway).
  • knra_grl
    knra_grl Posts: 1,568 Member
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    Depends totally on how you are using it.

    If you are tossing it on a salad, or tossing noodles in it, you are going to get most of it.

    If you are using it (or, butter) to lubricate the pan so you can fry something in it, you'll probably get not much at all. (this can be hard to tell, because usually whatever you are cooking is going to lose juice or fat into the pan anyway).

    That and how many portions per meal? When I am cooking I end up with 4-6 portions sometimes more. Enter it in the recipe section on your profile if you are making larger quantities then you can calculate the calories for the entire dish (that is if you are doing say a stir fry or something) - if it's just simply for browning or cooking your meats, personally I just add a little olive oil and use a paper towel to spread it around the pan and cook on a lower heat.
  • Paindoesnthurt
    Paindoesnthurt Posts: 51 Member
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    Quick aside from calories. Best to use grass-fed butter, coconut oil or olive oil as your sources of cooking oils rather than vegetable oils of all kinds. They're definitely bad for you. Anyway, that being said, if you must measure calories, just know that one serve of fat is the size of your thumb which equates to a teaspoon. Usually that would mean probably 14grams of fat for most cooking oils. so I'd venture to say...14 x 9 equals 126 calories per serve as an estimate
  • chezjuan
    chezjuan Posts: 747 Member
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    If you want to try to be as accurate as possible, you can always measure what is left in the pan after cooking, and enter the amount minus the leftover...

    So if you did 15ml, and you have 5 ml left over, you would enter 10 ml. I don't do this normally, but if I do something like oven fry fish, where I use 45ml, I will measure the leftover oil as there is generally about 1/2 left, and that works out to a good number of calories.
  • melodyg
    melodyg Posts: 1,423 Member
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    I usually divide what I use to cook by the number of servings. For example, if I use a tablespoon of olive oil to pan fry a pound of fish or chicken, then I count in a 4 oz portion of meat and 1/4 tbsp of olive oil for my meal. I also have an olive oil mister that I use for cooking scrambled eggs or similar and typically don't count that portion of oil in.

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