Calorie per serving size...what is the serving size?

Losewtforlife4him
Losewtforlife4him Posts: 422 Member
So when a recipe gives the calories and the serving size (which I love and wish I knew where I could find recipes that always do specify this), how do I know what the serving size is? Is there an easy way to figure this out and I'm having a blonde moment? Lol!

Replies

  • faidwen
    faidwen Posts: 131 Member
    Typically, recipes will tell you the number of people it servers. IE: Serves 4 etc...

    If it does not, then I typically look up a similar recipe and find out how many it servers, and then determine the percentages based on the contents for a "serving".

    But most tell you how many it serves, or how much it makes.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
    So when a recipe gives the calories and the serving size (which I love and wish I knew where I could find recipes that always do specify this), how do I know what the serving size is? Is there an easy way to figure this out and I'm having a blonde moment? Lol!

    A lot of recipes will say they are for 6 servings but maybe that serving is bigger or smaller than you want it to be. Divide the recipe by the amount of servings you actually want it to be. Use the recipe builder here. If you enter a recipe into MFP then you would eat that portion that is one serving. It tells you the calories for 1 serving.
    Say you baked a casserole that is 6 servings. That means there are 6 equal portions if you cut it or scooped it out. If you weighed it and divided it up you would take whatever 1/6 of the total casserole weight was. If you eyeballed it then you would take what looked like 1/6 of the casserole.
    Sites like food.com or allrecipes.com usually have a suggested serving size indicated for recipes.
  • Losewtforlife4him
    Losewtforlife4him Posts: 422 Member
    faidwen wrote: »
    Typically, recipes will tell you the number of people it servers. IE: Serves 4 etc...

    If it does not, then I typically look up a similar recipe and find out how many it servers, and then determine the percentages based on the contents for a "serving".

    But most tell you how many it serves, or how much it makes.
    Lounmoun wrote: »
    So when a recipe gives the calories and the serving size (which I love and wish I knew where I could find recipes that always do specify this), how do I know what the serving size is? Is there an easy way to figure this out and I'm having a blonde moment? Lol!

    A lot of recipes will say they are for 6 servings but maybe that serving is bigger or smaller than you want it to be. Divide the recipe by the amount of servings you actually want it to be. Use the recipe builder here. If you enter a recipe into MFP then you would eat that portion that is one serving. It tells you the calories for 1 serving.
    Say you baked a casserole that is 6 servings. That means there are 6 equal portions if you cut it or scooped it out. If you weighed it and divided it up you would take whatever 1/6 of the total casserole weight was. If you eyeballed it then you would take what looked like 1/6 of the casserole.
    Sites like food.com or allrecipes.com usually have a suggested serving size indicated for recipes.

    Thanks. Yeah, I guess it just confuses me when it only says how many it serves but not the quantity of the serving ( such as 1 cup, 8 oz...) it's a headache to have to scoop out each serving into another dish do you know what I mean? And weighing the pot alone and then with the finished product wouldn't work for me either as my oxo scales only weighs at 2.3 kg max. Not sure of any other way to do this?

  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    edited May 2016
    faidwen wrote: »
    Typically, recipes will tell you the number of people it servers. IE: Serves 4 etc...

    If it does not, then I typically look up a similar recipe and find out how many it servers, and then determine the percentages based on the contents for a "serving".

    But most tell you how many it serves, or how much it makes.
    Lounmoun wrote: »
    So when a recipe gives the calories and the serving size (which I love and wish I knew where I could find recipes that always do specify this), how do I know what the serving size is? Is there an easy way to figure this out and I'm having a blonde moment? Lol!

    A lot of recipes will say they are for 6 servings but maybe that serving is bigger or smaller than you want it to be. Divide the recipe by the amount of servings you actually want it to be. Use the recipe builder here. If you enter a recipe into MFP then you would eat that portion that is one serving. It tells you the calories for 1 serving.
    Say you baked a casserole that is 6 servings. That means there are 6 equal portions if you cut it or scooped it out. If you weighed it and divided it up you would take whatever 1/6 of the total casserole weight was. If you eyeballed it then you would take what looked like 1/6 of the casserole.
    Sites like food.com or allrecipes.com usually have a suggested serving size indicated for recipes.

    Thanks. Yeah, I guess it just confuses me when it only says how many it serves but not the quantity of the serving ( such as 1 cup, 8 oz...) it's a headache to have to scoop out each serving into another dish do you know what I mean? And weighing the pot alone and then with the finished product wouldn't work for me either as my oxo scales only weighs at 2.3 kg max. Not sure of any other way to do this?

    But how often do you cook something that weighs more than 5 pounds?

    the best thing to do is weigh the entire thing in ounces and set your servings (for example 48 ounces) to 48 servings and take out the ounces you want to eat on the plate or in a bowl.

    I use the recipe builder religiously and I cook a lot. I rarely can cook anything that weighs more than 5 pounds and the tare button on mine I am surprised still works because I wear the tare button out! LOL
  • Losewtforlife4him
    Losewtforlife4him Posts: 422 Member
    RoxieDawn wrote: »
    faidwen wrote: »
    Typically, recipes will tell you the number of people it servers. IE: Serves 4 etc...

    If it does not, then I typically look up a similar recipe and find out how many it servers, and then determine the percentages based on the contents for a "serving".

    But most tell you how many it serves, or how much it makes.
    Lounmoun wrote: »
    So when a recipe gives the calories and the serving size (which I love and wish I knew where I could find recipes that always do specify this), how do I know what the serving size is? Is there an easy way to figure this out and I'm having a blonde moment? Lol!

    A lot of recipes will say they are for 6 servings but maybe that serving is bigger or smaller than you want it to be. Divide the recipe by the amount of servings you actually want it to be. Use the recipe builder here. If you enter a recipe into MFP then you would eat that portion that is one serving. It tells you the calories for 1 serving.
    Say you baked a casserole that is 6 servings. That means there are 6 equal portions if you cut it or scooped it out. If you weighed it and divided it up you would take whatever 1/6 of the total casserole weight was. If you eyeballed it then you would take what looked like 1/6 of the casserole.
    Sites like food.com or allrecipes.com usually have a suggested serving size indicated for recipes.

    Thanks. Yeah, I guess it just confuses me when it only says how many it serves but not the quantity of the serving ( such as 1 cup, 8 oz...) it's a headache to have to scoop out each serving into another dish do you know what I mean? And weighing the pot alone and then with the finished product wouldn't work for me either as my oxo scales only weighs at 2.3 kg max. Not sure of any other way to do this?

    But how often do you cook something that weighs more than 5 pounds?

    the best thing to do is weigh the entire thing in ounces and set your servings (for example 48 ounces) to 48 servings and take out the ounces you want to eat on the plate or in a bowl.

    I use the recipe builder religiously and I cook a lot. I rarely can cook anything that weighs more than 5 pounds and the tare button on mine I am surprised still works because I wear the tare button out! LOL

    Well I've tried to weigh my ninja crock pot/roaster when it's full of a lentil curry or a pulled beef BBQ and it gave some astronomical number. What would I be doing wrong? Or maybe the battery was low when I did that.

  • Losewtforlife4him
    Losewtforlife4him Posts: 422 Member
    RoxieDawn wrote: »
    faidwen wrote: »
    Typically, recipes will tell you the number of people it servers. IE: Serves 4 etc...

    If it does not, then I typically look up a similar recipe and find out how many it servers, and then determine the percentages based on the contents for a "serving".

    But most tell you how many it serves, or how much it makes.
    Lounmoun wrote: »
    So when a recipe gives the calories and the serving size (which I love and wish I knew where I could find recipes that always do specify this), how do I know what the serving size is? Is there an easy way to figure this out and I'm having a blonde moment? Lol!

    A lot of recipes will say they are for 6 servings but maybe that serving is bigger or smaller than you want it to be. Divide the recipe by the amount of servings you actually want it to be. Use the recipe builder here. If you enter a recipe into MFP then you would eat that portion that is one serving. It tells you the calories for 1 serving.
    Say you baked a casserole that is 6 servings. That means there are 6 equal portions if you cut it or scooped it out. If you weighed it and divided it up you would take whatever 1/6 of the total casserole weight was. If you eyeballed it then you would take what looked like 1/6 of the casserole.
    Sites like food.com or allrecipes.com usually have a suggested serving size indicated for recipes.

    Thanks. Yeah, I guess it just confuses me when it only says how many it serves but not the quantity of the serving ( such as 1 cup, 8 oz...) it's a headache to have to scoop out each serving into another dish do you know what I mean? And weighing the pot alone and then with the finished product wouldn't work for me either as my oxo scales only weighs at 2.3 kg max. Not sure of any other way to do this?

    But how often do you cook something that weighs more than 5 pounds?

    the best thing to do is weigh the entire thing in ounces and set your servings (for example 48 ounces) to 48 servings and take out the ounces you want to eat on the plate or in a bowl.

    I use the recipe builder religiously and I cook a lot. I rarely can cook anything that weighs more than 5 pounds and the tare button on mine I am surprised still works because I wear the tare button out! LOL

    And also when I tried to weigh a large dish before with a large portion of whatever it was that I was cooking, I couldn't even read the scale to see the weight.

  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    edited May 2016
    RoxieDawn wrote: »
    faidwen wrote: »
    Typically, recipes will tell you the number of people it servers. IE: Serves 4 etc...

    If it does not, then I typically look up a similar recipe and find out how many it servers, and then determine the percentages based on the contents for a "serving".

    But most tell you how many it serves, or how much it makes.
    Lounmoun wrote: »
    So when a recipe gives the calories and the serving size (which I love and wish I knew where I could find recipes that always do specify this), how do I know what the serving size is? Is there an easy way to figure this out and I'm having a blonde moment? Lol!

    A lot of recipes will say they are for 6 servings but maybe that serving is bigger or smaller than you want it to be. Divide the recipe by the amount of servings you actually want it to be. Use the recipe builder here. If you enter a recipe into MFP then you would eat that portion that is one serving. It tells you the calories for 1 serving.
    Say you baked a casserole that is 6 servings. That means there are 6 equal portions if you cut it or scooped it out. If you weighed it and divided it up you would take whatever 1/6 of the total casserole weight was. If you eyeballed it then you would take what looked like 1/6 of the casserole.
    Sites like food.com or allrecipes.com usually have a suggested serving size indicated for recipes.

    Thanks. Yeah, I guess it just confuses me when it only says how many it serves but not the quantity of the serving ( such as 1 cup, 8 oz...) it's a headache to have to scoop out each serving into another dish do you know what I mean? And weighing the pot alone and then with the finished product wouldn't work for me either as my oxo scales only weighs at 2.3 kg max. Not sure of any other way to do this?

    But how often do you cook something that weighs more than 5 pounds?

    the best thing to do is weigh the entire thing in ounces and set your servings (for example 48 ounces) to 48 servings and take out the ounces you want to eat on the plate or in a bowl.

    I use the recipe builder religiously and I cook a lot. I rarely can cook anything that weighs more than 5 pounds and the tare button on mine I am surprised still works because I wear the tare button out! LOL

    Well I've tried to weigh my ninja crock pot/roaster when it's full of a lentil curry or a pulled beef BBQ and it gave some astronomical number. What would I be doing wrong? Or maybe the battery was low when I did that.

    Have you ever put the crock pot on the scale when empty and weighed it to see how many pounds it is?

    The only other thing I can think of is to do alot of math. It involves keeping up with all the ingredients (cans, ounces of meet, weights of the veggies.. etc.) how much they weigh separately and come up with a total. Sort of like weight the liquids and solids and coming up with a total and then setting the recipe build to the total weight (for example 48 ounces) and set the recipe to 48 servings.. or if it comes to 8 - 1 cup servings you can set it to 8.

    It is the same concept for the entire weights, but you do the math on paper. After you do this a time or two, you will know about how much a serving is. I now just do mine for example chili, my crock pot holds 10 servings and I can pretty much guage that I cooked 10 or 8 servings.

    It just takes a time or two.

    places like allrecipes, cook.com, yummly.com etc. will usually tell you how many servings the exact recipe serves. I am actually surprised that you are finding your recipes do not include the sevings except recipes that may be specially on personal blog posts by indiviuals that do not include this info.
  • Losewtforlife4him
    Losewtforlife4him Posts: 422 Member
    I'll have to try this again with the empty crock pot. You're right. I guess I can see how much mine holds and go from there with the servings. That's smart. I did just measure cups last night after making my lentil curry to see how many servings which came out to be 8 cups. Thanks for the tips!
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    I'll have to try this again with the empty crock pot. You're right. I guess I can see how much mine holds and go from there with the servings. That's smart. I did just measure cups last night after making my lentil curry to see how many servings which came out to be 8 cups. Thanks for the tips!

    I just looked at mine out of curiosity and I have an Ozeri scale that I bought it from Amazon for 19 bucks a year ago and I just weighed my old (really old) crockpot and it weights 6.2 pounds empty..

    I might can only suggest next investing in a cheap scale like mine (Its really a good scale) that will weigh 10 pounds +.

    Best of luck with this.
  • Losewtforlife4him
    Losewtforlife4him Posts: 422 Member
    RoxieDawn wrote: »
    I'll have to try this again with the empty crock pot. You're right. I guess I can see how much mine holds and go from there with the servings. That's smart. I did just measure cups last night after making my lentil curry to see how many servings which came out to be 8 cups. Thanks for the tips!

    I just looked at mine out of curiosity and I have an Ozeri scale that I bought it from Amazon for 19 bucks a year ago and I just weighed my old (really old) crockpot and it weights 6.2 pounds empty..

    I might can only suggest next investing in a cheap scale like mine (Its really a good scale) that will weigh 10 pounds +.

    Best of luck with this.

    Thank you so much! After I get finished my bike, I'll check mine out and let you know what it says :smile:

  • capaul42
    capaul42 Posts: 1,390 Member
    If you have problems reading the scale with large items on it, try putting a bowl underneath it. I keep a round gladware container next to my scale for this reason.
  • cyndi272
    cyndi272 Posts: 2 Member
    I don't understand why we can't just enter the serving size, most recipes give it but if you are typing into MFP, it should give us the option of listing serving size every other recipe book you use on IPad or laptop does why can't we have it here too.
  • Losewtforlife4him
    Losewtforlife4him Posts: 422 Member
    cyndi272 wrote: »
    I don't understand why we can't just enter the serving size, most recipes give it but if you are typing into MFP, it should give us the option of listing serving size every other recipe book you use on IPad or laptop does why can't we have it here too.

    I agree