How do I measure out my homemade chili by weight and not serving size?

Pain in the butt to weigh before and afters but there you go! I usually use a placeholder (say 10 portions) when I first save the recipe. Then I go back and edit the portions according to weight. I sometimes use 10 or 100g portions instead of 1g one's as the mood strikes.

I just enter all the ingredients and have a serving be 1/4 of the whole if I make enough to serve four people. i.e. 1/4 onion, 4 oz. beef, 1 c. tomatoes, etc.

I do this, too. I just bought a higher capacity scale. I use to measure how much I put on each plate/bowl and what went in the leftover containers and then just added them all together; so I didn't have to dirty an extra dish finding total weight.

JaneiR36 wrote: »

Sounds like some of you will be in the market for a higher capacity scale :bigsmile:

My scale is already 11 lb capacity, but I've an abnormally large Crock Pot and the batches I make in it put me over 11 lbs. But I don't make large batches frequently enough to justify spending money on an even higher capacity scale. And as @PAV8888 points out, going higher means I lose sensitivity when weighing small servings in grams.

Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »

When i want to know my calories... I put all my ingredients into an empty food log day, because i honestly dont like the recipe builder... it never picks the right things i eat anyway... So when everything is in, i scroll down and it tells me all the total calories, carbs, fat, sodium, etc.

So lets say the total for my recipe was 1650 calories. i then have to decide whats a good calorie amount that fits into my goals... say its 350. I divide 350 into 1650 about 4.7.. so roughly 5 bowls. So i put 5 bowls on the counter and just make 5... if one is 250g and another is 265g.. it honestly doesnt matter to me because its going to balance out in the end between the 5 bowls anyway

You then save that as a meal.

You can then use % of meal as your servings.

Or you can also create a recipe using the OLD recipe builder (link to the right of the new recipe builder on the web page)...And enter one ingredient into the old recipe builder, the (unique) name of the meal you just saved.

PAV8888 wrote: »

JaneiR36 wrote: »

Sounds like some of you will be in the market for a higher capacity scale :bigsmile:

Here's the issue: MOST (affordable) 0.5g sensitive scales TOP at 1kg; MOST (affordable) 1g sensitive scales TOP at 2-4kg. To go above 4kg, most of the (affordable) scales I've seen become 5g sensitive.

When I cook a big pot it is often more than 4kg. When I add cinnamon to my yogurt it is usually less than 1g

I want an affordable 0.5g sensitive 5kg (or even 10kg, why not) scale.... can you find me one ;-) ????

Well that's easy - you're not gonna throw out your more sensitive scale just because you got a 10kg capacity one. And if you're really weighing a 9kg batch of food, I'd hope 5g of error for the total weight would be acceptable! Finally, if you drop the requirement to 1g sensitivity rather than 0.5g, there might be more cost effective options on the market.

PS: you weigh your cinnamon?

Edit: aw man they got scales looking like iPads. I shouldn't have done this search - for less than $10, a really sleek looking 5kg scale can be had. Not that I need another one. The 5kg range is where the most options are at. These are the only two I found at 10kg so far. I may not have clicked on some >$30 ones to see what their range was... These two are at 1g sensitivity like all my other food scales.

JaneiR36 wrote: »

PAV8888 wrote: »

JaneiR36 wrote: »

Sounds like some of you will be in the market for a higher capacity scale :bigsmile:

Here's the issue: MOST (affordable) 0.5g sensitive scales TOP at 1kg; MOST (affordable) 1g sensitive scales TOP at 2-4kg. To go above 4kg, most of the (affordable) scales I've seen become 5g sensitive.

When I cook a big pot it is often more than 4kg. When I add cinnamon to my yogurt it is usually less than 1g

I want an affordable 0.5g sensitive 5kg (or even 10kg, why not) scale.... can you find me one ;-) ????

Well that's easy - you're not gonna throw out your more sensitive scale just because you got a 10kg capacity one. And if you're really weighing a 9kg batch of food, I'd hope 5g of error for the total weight would be acceptable! Finally, if you drop the requirement to 1g sensitivity rather than 0.5g, there might be more cost effective options on the market.

PS: you weigh your cinnamon?

Edit: aw man they got scales looking like iPads. I shouldn't have done this search - for less than $10, a really sleek looking 5kg scale can be had. Not that I need another one. The 5kg range is where the most options are at. These are the only two I found at 10kg so far. I may not have clicked on some >$30 ones to see what their range was... These two are at 1g sensitivity like all my other food scales.

Inspiring research. Of course in Canada not the same options
Mind you, I ran into an interesting one: https://www.amazon.ca/Smart-Weigh-Culinary-Platforms-Ingredients/dp/B01LXXBQWD/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1485773795&sr=8-2&keywords=scale+10kg

Having said that, it fails because I would prefer a more off-set or detachable screen so you can read it when a big plate is on there!

Look_Its_Kriss wrote: »

When i want to know my calories... I put all my ingredients into an empty food log day, because i honestly dont like the recipe builder... it never picks the right things i eat anyway...

Did you know you can manually add ingredients in the recipe builder? So you can pick the exact brand/variety you used from the database and use that in your recipe. I never use the bulk import function as it would be way out for my cooking, but I use the recipe builder all the time.

Edit to actually be on topic: I don't weigh my recipes, I just divide them into portions for freezing/using. I have a lot of tupperware that are the same size so they're all be similar portions, and in the long run any inaccuracies would work themselves out. Saves a lot of hassle for me.

Ninkyou wrote: »

I usually do the weight of all the ingredients added together as the serving size, and then when it's done, the weight of what goes in the bowl is my serving size. So if my chili weighs 1400 grams, that's what I put in as the serving for the recipe.

The problem with this, when you've got something you're cooking, is that the weight of your ingredients included the weight of the water in those ingredients. When you cook, an unpredictable amount of water boils off, but all the calories still stay behind. So, if you've got 1000 grams of chili ingredients with 1000 calories, you calculate 1 calorie per gram. But when you boil those ingredients down to 800 grams, they still have 1000 calories or 1.25 calories per gram. If you measure out 250 grams of chili, you would be calculating 250 calories, when it really has 312. Weighing your batch pre-cooking, and your serving post-cooking, is always going to result in undercounting calories, so it should be avoided.

You're going to have the same problem, to a lesser extent, if you save your chili as a recipe with 1.25 calories per gram-sized serving and try to re-use it. If you boil off more or less water than normal, your calculation is going to be off. How much of a difference this can make will depend on how long you cook it, the temp you cook it at, and how tight your lid is, if any. I wouldn't sweat it too much, however. In most cases, this probably makes less difference than the ratio of beans/meat/tomatoes in your bowl. And, if you are a little over on this batch, and a little under on the next batch, it works out in the end.

I never bother to weight the pot. It is too hot and too big to put in the scale and the scale will not hold it. I always get two laden full and what ever that is in grams = one serving. I then get my tupperware and fill up the containers with the same amount and label them appropriate ( 1 serving, XXX grams, and date).
I find this method easier for me.

Mirlanda1 wrote: »

Ninkyou wrote: »

I usually do the weight of all the ingredients added together as the serving size, and then when it's done, the weight of what goes in the bowl is my serving size. So if my chili weighs 1400 grams, that's what I put in as the serving for the recipe.

The problem with this, when you've got something you're cooking, is that the weight of your ingredients included the weight of the water in those ingredients. When you cook, an unpredictable amount of water boils off, but all the calories still stay behind. So, if you've got 1000 grams of chili ingredients with 1000 calories, you calculate 1 calorie per gram. But when you boil those ingredients down to 800 grams, they still have 1000 calories or 1.25 calories per gram. If you measure out 250 grams of chili, you would be calculating 250 calories, when it really has 312. Weighing your batch pre-cooking, and your serving post-cooking, is always going to result in undercounting calories, so it should be avoided.

You're going to have the same problem, to a lesser extent, if you save your chili as a recipe with 1.25 calories per gram-sized serving and try to re-use it. If you boil off more or less water than normal, your calculation is going to be off. How much of a difference this can make will depend on how long you cook it, the temp you cook it at, and how tight your lid is, if any. I wouldn't sweat it too much, however. In most cases, this probably makes less difference than the ratio of beans/meat/tomatoes in your bowl. And, if you are a little over on this batch, and a little under on the next batch, it works out in the end.

We record the total weight of the food after cooking, not before. There's some evaporation after initial cooking when the food sits, but in my experience A) it's not significant, and B ), I actually re-weighed and recorded updated values in some cases. Hence why I know A) The use of total weight of cooked food really offers a lot of simplication and works. It's not error prone

I usually do the weight thing and divide but I do have the problem when I make soup that the pot itself is too heavy for my scale (enameled cast iron - I put it on my regular scale and it was 11 pounds) and so there is no way to do that so I picked a number for servings (my first attempt I went with 4, learned I should have tried 6) and then divided it into that number of portions and weighed them to make sure they were close in weight. Although I did look into getting a scale that can hold more and found a cool blue one on amazon for a decent price.

https://amazon.com/Weighmax-GL25-Tempered-Digital-Mailing/dp/B01167YPDS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8