Serving sizes (for bulk recipes)

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Skillet007
Skillet007 Posts: 55 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I have been measuring all of my ingredients for making meals since starting my weight loss and it's been an incredible help. The only problem I'm having right now is sorting slow cooker/ bulk meals into serving sizes.

For example, I made a huge pulled pork recipe in my slow cooker for a pot luck that got called off last second. The recipe I used had about 200 calories being tied up in secondary ingredients with the rest being in the pulled pork itself. I used an 8 lb pulled pork so that ends up being over 8000 calories. The recipe said it serves ten. I took a cup of pork to eat today and it said it was over 800 calories! I was expecting something around 350-450. Am I going to have to measure this out cup by cup to get an accurate serving size? I love using my slow cooker (I'm in college and it saves time) but it's a pain when a recipe tells you how many servings something is but doesn't give you the serving measurements (one cup per serving, etc)

Replies

  • tekkiechikk
    tekkiechikk Posts: 375 Member
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    Run it through the recipe builder (or determine calories per ingredient and then add them all up) to find total calories for the entire recipe. Then use a food scale and weigh the entire cooked meal (I go by grams) and divide by the number of servings you want to get out of it to determine calories/serving. It's about the most accurate thing you can do, and if there are too many calories in a recommended serving, make the serving sizes smaller.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    Yes...you would have to measure it out or weigh it out to see what an actual serving is...also, you're better off using the recipe builder than some random user entered thing in the database for pulled pork...that's way to generic and who knows what that user was using in their recipe or whatever. Learning how to properly use the database is 3/4 of the battle at least.
  • drachfit
    drachfit Posts: 217 Member
    edited March 2016
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    8000 divided by 10 is 800 calories.

    if you took less than 1 tenth of the pork in your 1 - cup serving, then you listed the serving size too big.

    I make bulk recipes all the time. Build the recipe in the recipe builder, and then make the serving size what you want it to be. If you make the serving size 20, you will have ~400cal per serving. Now, you just have to make sure that you get 20 meals out of it or else your logging will be wrong. If you don't log it 20 times before you are done, you need to go back and fix it.
  • blondie_mfp
    blondie_mfp Posts: 62 Member
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    next time, try to calculate the total weight of the entire recipe (so you might have to weigh your slow-cooker bowl while empty, then weigh it when full, calculating the difference as the weight of just the food). then log the total weight in grams as the number of servings in the recipe builder. whenever you serve up some to eat, simply weigh your serving and log the grams as the number of servings.

    example:
    total pulled pork recipe = 8200 calories, 2050 grams of food
    recipe builder = 2050 "servings"
    dinner = 150 grams of food = 150 "servings" = 600 calories

    sometimes the recipe builder gets picky and doesn't like large numbers, so I just divide everything by 10. the end results are the same, though (205 "servings" total, 15 "servings" for dinner).

    or, you can just take the entire recipe and pre-divide it out into plastic tupperware bowls for the number of servings you want to make from it. less exact, but easier, and close enough if you are the one eating all of it anyway.
  • Queenmunchy
    Queenmunchy Posts: 3,380 Member
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    amyrebeccah wrote: »
    blondie_mfp wrote: »
    next time, try to calculate the total weight of the entire recipe (so you might have to weigh your slow-cooker bowl while empty, then weigh it when full, calculating the difference as the weight of just the food). then log the total weight in grams as the number of servings in the recipe builder. whenever you serve up some to eat, simply weigh your serving and log the grams as the number of servings.

    example:
    total pulled pork recipe = 8200 calories, 2050 grams of food
    recipe builder = 2050 "servings"
    dinner = 150 grams of food = 150 "servings" = 600 calories

    sometimes the recipe builder gets picky and doesn't like large numbers, so I just divide everything by 10. the end results are the same, though (205 "servings" total, 15 "servings" for dinner).

    or, you can just take the entire recipe and pre-divide it out into plastic tupperware bowls for the number of servings you want to make from it. less exact, but easier, and close enough if you are the one eating all of it anyway.

    If I don't want to pre-divide, I note the weight of a serving and write it on a whiteboard on my fridge. Something like "Pasta dish, 1 serving =406 g"

    You can also do that as the title of your recipe in the recipe builder. "Pulled Pork (300g)" or whatever.
  • Skillet007
    Skillet007 Posts: 55 Member
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    I think I need to get a bigger scale. It errors out at 4 oz so I usually just use it for dishes with many smaller amounts of food, like stir fry. I ended up scooping out 18 cups of the pork and that helped a lot to bring the calories down, although it was still more than I thought. I'm just baffled on why recipes I pull from the internet (using recipe builder) are always so different calorically from the app.
  • ktekc
    ktekc Posts: 879 Member
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    They are probably different because of differences in types and brands of ingredients used.
  • Skillet007
    Skillet007 Posts: 55 Member
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    ktekc wrote: »
    They are probably different because of differences in types and brands of ingredients used.

    I agree, ktec, it's just frustrating because pork is still pork, you know? It's alright. It's just one more small hurdle.

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