Determining how much meat is in a pound of mussels?

michmill98_1
michmill98_1 Posts: 60 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Our local bar and grill has 1/2 price mussels on Mondays. The appetizer is a pound, the entree is 2 pounds + pasta + awesome cheesy garlic bread. I've only ordered the entree once as it was just too much food (but I did eat all the mussels and bread :smile: ).

I know the restaurant weight is shell on and I can find nutritional info for the meat alone (USDA cooked has 146 calories per an edible portion of 3 oz/85g) but how do you determine how much meat is in that pound of shells?

Replies

  • RobinvdM
    RobinvdM Posts: 634 Member
    If you mean how much meat is in the USDA cooked, then I would suggest probably mussels all are "roughly" the same weight/size without the shell- sort of like almonds are all roughly exactly the same weight (some a fraction more some a fraction less but on avg the same.) So they just took the avg weight of the mussel and gave it the value they did. It *sounds* like they are only considering the edible portion of the mussel, which would be without shell? I could be completely off base.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,422 Member
    edited May 2016
    There are several entries for mussels in the food database. Some with and some without shell. It looks like most of them are calculated without shell, but the calories are pretty small, just take an average. I'd be more worried about the butter and wine used to cook them.


    oops...


    It's still a good lean protein. I would figure a pound is about a serving - can't be more than 150-200 cals.
  • michmill98_1
    michmill98_1 Posts: 60 Member
    I know there are multiple entries - the ones I was seeing were without the shell so I was trying to get a rough estimate of how many ounces of meat were actually in a pound of shell-on mussels to get an idea of how many servings I would need to enter.

    Thanks! This place offers multiple ways of prep - butter & garlic, butter & old bay, diablo, marinara, Thai, and a chipotle lime. It's not something that I eat every time, but short of the grilled/broiled fish of the day special or a grilled chicken breast, it's probably one of the lower-calorie things on the menu even with the butter sauce! Usually if I do the appetizer portion, I'll get a side of grilled asparagus or broccoli or the garlic bread if I'm feeling really indulgent! Since I won't pick up the bowl and drink the sauce, I was probably going to do a quick add of 200 for the butter based sauces or 100 if I go the marinara route.
  • tvw12
    tvw12 Posts: 1 Member
    *This is chart is based on information provided by:
    NutritionData; Know What you Eat:
    1 lb. of mussels, in the shell, yields 3.5 -6.0 oz. of cooked mussel meat.

    I was wondering the same thing. I found this. And found that a one pound lobster is about 3.5 oz of meat. Skip the butter !
  • BigTandthesquatters
    BigTandthesquatters Posts: 151 Member
    weigh before save the empty shells weigh those after. Then do the math. Its what I do when I eat ribs.
  • cl74964
    cl74964 Posts: 1 Member
    michmill98 thanks for posting this question that is for some reason, impossible to find a straight simple answer to anywhere online??? Sorry to see you too never got a straight answer. "How many mussels are in 3 oz?" Why is this so difficult to answer?
  • SuzySunshine99
    SuzySunshine99 Posts: 2,989 Member
    cl74964 wrote: »
    michmill98 thanks for posting this question that is for some reason, impossible to find a straight simple answer to anywhere online??? Sorry to see you too never got a straight answer. "How many mussels are in 3 oz?" Why is this so difficult to answer?

    It's difficult to answer because mussels are all different sizes. I've had some big meaty ones, and others that are pretty small and sad. There's no really accurate way to answer this question without weighing the meat portion, so at a restaurant, you'd just have to estimate.
  • sgt1372
    sgt1372 Posts: 3,997 Member
    1lb of SHELLED mussels would be more mussels than most ppl v could eat in 1 sitting.

    1 lb in the shell, no problrm and my guess is that the "meat" in thise shells eouldn't weigh more than 4-6 oz.
  • wilson10102018
    wilson10102018 Posts: 1,306 Member
    The mussels are unimportant. The butter in the sauce is where 95% of the calories will be found.

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