How in the world to measure.....

I pour it into a bowl on my food scale, get the total weight and divide it up into however many servings seems appropriate. Then when I want a serve, I chuck my bowl on the scale and measure out the correct weight serving.

Weigh each of the ingredients when you're measuring them (which you're probably doing anyway to get the full calories). I'm going to make up some numbers.

150 g beef = 200 cals
300 g tomatoes = 50 cals
200 g beans = 300 cals

So if that was the entire thing (I know, it's not even close, bear with me), your WHOLErecipe is 650 grams and 550 calories. No mass is lost or gained if you're cooking (except maybe some water if you cook uncovered. I always cook soups covered for that reason).

Now all you have to do is a simple ratio. Let's say you want your chili and you zero out the weight of your bowl and you measure in 50 g. All you do is a simple ratio.

50 g ??? calories
_____ = _____
650 g 550 calories

Cross multiply and divide. 50*550 /650 = 42.3 calories in the small bowl of chili.

Alternately, divide it out into 2 cup portions when you make it. That's what I do when I freeze liquidy foods. That way I don't need to measure later.

Could you figure out the volume of whatever you're storing it in? Like I usually store stuff like that in Mason jars. I know a quart is 4 cups so I can figure out about how many cups I have total. If you don't know the volume of something, you can fill it with water then measure the water with measuring cups.

Alternately you can weigh an empty container, zero the scale, then add the chili to see how much the contents of each container weighs then add it all up.

Best guess - best you can do.
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I have a tupperware container that I know holds 12 cups of fluid, and otheres that hold 8. After that, I just use a 1 cup ladle (you'll find that a lot of ladles are this size) to portion it out later. It gets you pretty darn close!

Make it. Put a big mixing bowl that can hold all of it on a kitchen scale, zero the scale and pour in the whole batch. That will give you the total weight. Since I think in grams I would divide the total weigh by 100 which would give the number of 100gram servings. Divide the total calories by that number which will give you the number of calories per 100 grams. When you eat it, weigh the portion you are eating and if it is say 150 grams, you have 1.5 x the calories/100grams you figured out earlier. This way you can make servings as large or small as you want, simply modify the calories based on that base amount.

This takes just a little more time, but it is better to record the total weight of cooked one-pot food. Some large pots plus contents will exceed the maximum capacity of your kitchen scale, so you will have to weigh and record it in batches. Just keep a piece of paper and pen/pencil with you. When cooked, and prior to serving, take a smaller pot and tare it on your kitchen scale. Add how many cups of chili/stew/casserole (about 8oz or 227g per cup serving) that you think your family will eat for that meal, record the net weight of that batch of food. You can put the smaller pot back on the stove to keep it warm. Let everyone know to take food only from the smaller pot. When the large pot of food is cool, weigh that in batches if needed, then add all of the weight of the individual batches to get the total. Later you can calculate the per serving values.

Alatariel75 wrote: »

I pour it into a bowl on my food scale, get the total weight and divide it up into however many servings seems appropriate. Then when I want a serve, I chuck my bowl on the scale and measure out the correct weight serving.

This is what I do too.

next time you could measure and record everything before it goes into the pot. then you would be able to calculate serving sizes, calories, protein, etc. based off of that information.