Calculating Calories in Slow Cooker?
srecupid
Posts: 660 Member
Making Carnitas in a slow cooker tommorow. Seeing how any water that may evaporate will be self contained does that mean the yield size will be the sum of the parts? I don't think my slow cooker is small enough to weigh empty on the scale.
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Replies
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I wouldn't recommend climbing in the slow cooker to calculate calories.0
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The total calories will be the same but, as you said, the cooked weight will be lower. That means that the cooked recipe will have more calories per gram.
If you want to be as accurate as possible, you'll need to weight the whole cooked recipe. Do you have a different container that you could weigh (so that you can subtract that weight) and then transfer the cooked food from the slow cooker to that container to get the final recipe weight?0 -
Use the recipe builder and weigh the ingredients before cooking. Make sure you choose the "raw" entry. How you divide it into servings is up to you. Personally, I divide all recipes into 100g servings for easy math. Some folks use 1g = 1 serving. Your choice.0
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so weigh them all in a separate bowl and then poor them into the cooker
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The total calories will be the same but, as you said, the cooked weight will be lower. That means that the cooked recipe will have more calories per gram.
If you want to be as accurate as possible, you'll need to weight the whole cooked recipe. Do you have a different container that you could weigh (so that you can subtract that weight) and then transfer the cooked food from the slow cooker to that container to get the final recipe weight?
I may need to see how big it is in end0 -
Id measure all the ingredients and do 1 serving=1 ounce. In a slow cooker you won't loose or gain a lot of weight, so it should still be fairly accurate in the cooked vs uncooked argument.0
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starwhisperer6 wrote: »so weigh them all in a separate bowl and then poor them into the cooker
That gets you the calories, etc. What it does't get is a useful serving size. For that you need to weigh post cooking.0 -
jeepinshawn wrote: »Id measure all the ingredients and do 1 serving=1 ounce. In a slow cooker you won't loose or gain a lot of weight, so it should still be fairly accurate in the cooked vs uncooked argument.
yeah it's just meat and spices and i doubt the spices add much at all. I'm thinking i may just log it as the meat and add 10% and call it a day0 -
This is what I do.starwhisperer6 wrote: »so weigh them all in a separate bowl and then poor them into the cooker
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jeepinshawn wrote: »Id measure all the ingredients and do 1 serving=1 ounce. In a slow cooker you won't loose or gain a lot of weight, so it should still be fairly accurate in the cooked vs uncooked argument.
yeah it's just meat and spices and i doubt the spices add much at all. I'm thinking i may just log it as the meat and add 10% and call it a day
Why add 10%? Unless you're adding sugar or coke or something, the spices should be negligible.
Is it just you eating it or is it for a group? If it's just you, you can just divide it up into 6 or however many servings and each is 1/6 the total calories. Even if your servings aren't even, if you're the only one eating it in the end it'll add up to the total regardless.0 -
WalkingAlong wrote: »jeepinshawn wrote: »Id measure all the ingredients and do 1 serving=1 ounce. In a slow cooker you won't loose or gain a lot of weight, so it should still be fairly accurate in the cooked vs uncooked argument.
yeah it's just meat and spices and i doubt the spices add much at all. I'm thinking i may just log it as the meat and add 10% and call it a day
Why add 10%? Unless you're adding sugar or coke or something, the spices should be negligible.
Is it just you eating it or is it for a group? If it's just you, you can just divide it up into 6 or however many servings and each is 1/6 the total calories. Even if your servings aren't even, if you're the only one eating it in the end it'll add up to the total regardless.
Sharing. It's like 7 lbs of meat. Not sure all of it will even fit in the slow cooker. I entered the packages info in the database. I just like to overestimate to be on the safe side. But, if anything since the water has nowhere to go there really is no need to overestimate.0 -
I bet it'll fit. I put a 10lb. bag of chicken in mine (for ferret food) and it fits fine.WalkingAlong wrote: »jeepinshawn wrote: »Id measure all the ingredients and do 1 serving=1 ounce. In a slow cooker you won't loose or gain a lot of weight, so it should still be fairly accurate in the cooked vs uncooked argument.
yeah it's just meat and spices and i doubt the spices add much at all. I'm thinking i may just log it as the meat and add 10% and call it a day
Why add 10%? Unless you're adding sugar or coke or something, the spices should be negligible.
Is it just you eating it or is it for a group? If it's just you, you can just divide it up into 6 or however many servings and each is 1/6 the total calories. Even if your servings aren't even, if you're the only one eating it in the end it'll add up to the total regardless.
Sharing. It's like 7 lbs of meat. Not sure all of it will even fit in the slow cooker. I entered the packages info in the database. I just like to overestimate to be on the safe side. But, if anything since the water has nowhere to go there really is no need to overestimate.
Even if the water evaporated the calories are the same cooked as raw, it just weighs less. But I might be missing something in the logic.0 -
Let's say something has 3500 calories for the whole recipe and weighs 1000 grams before cooking and 700 grams after cooking.WalkingAlong wrote: »Even if the water evaporated the calories are the same cooked as raw, it just weighs less. But I might be missing something in the logic.
If you use the pre-cooking weight, you'll think that a 100 gram serving has 350 calories. However, a 100 gram serving actually has 500 calories because those 3500 calories are spread over 7 100 gram servings rather than 10.0 -
Oh right. But you shouldn't have to round up or down on the calorie inputs based on water weight loss or lack of it. The calories don't change, just the total weight.
Let's say something has 3500 calories for the whole recipe and weighs 1000 grams before cooking and 700 grams after cooking.WalkingAlong wrote: »Even if the water evaporated the calories are the same cooked as raw, it just weighs less. But I might be missing something in the logic.
If you use the pre-cooking weight, you'll think that a 100 gram serving has 350 calories. However, a 100 gram serving actually has 500 calories because those 3500 calories are spread over 7 100 gram servings rather than 10.
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I weigh and calculate things as they go in, then divide by 4 for serving size.0
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The calories overall don't change. If you split it into X number of servings, you can just take the calories and divide by X to get the calories per serving. If you use weight to determine servings, you have to use the cooked weight rather than the pre-cooked weight.WalkingAlong wrote: »
Oh right. But you shouldn't have to round up or down on the calorie inputs based on water weight loss or lack of it. The calories don't change, just the total weight.
Let's say something has 3500 calories for the whole recipe and weighs 1000 grams before cooking and 700 grams after cooking.WalkingAlong wrote: »Even if the water evaporated the calories are the same cooked as raw, it just weighs less. But I might be missing something in the logic.
If you use the pre-cooking weight, you'll think that a 100 gram serving has 350 calories. However, a 100 gram serving actually has 500 calories because those 3500 calories are spread over 7 100 gram servings rather than 10.
From my example above, let's say that I get a 257 gram serving. That would have 1285 calories. If I used pre-cooked weights, I'd think it just had 899.5 calories. That's a pretty big difference.0
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