Weighing cooked & frozen meat?

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kiela64
kiela64 Posts: 1,447 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hey so I live at home and consequently I don’t cook all my own food. I know meat is most accurately weighed raw, but sometimes i just fish in the freezer for something and pull out some frozen chicken or a hamburger and I don’t know what they weighed before cooked & frozen.

I’ve also had the issue of my mom swearing that the burger was 4oz raw (without anyone measuring or weighing it) and weighing the cooked one before eating and it’s 2oz on the dot. Is that equivalent? It seems odd to me.

I also don’t know what version of “cooked” to use, like there are a lot of different entries for the nutritional info of cooked chicken breast, thigh, hamburger etc. I know the cut of the meat that was bought but some of these are like brand names?

Any suggestions appreciated! I’m new to using a food scale and I don’t think it works if I don’t know what I’m measuring properly.

Replies

  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,752 Member
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    I portion out a lot of my meat before putting it in the freezer. Freezing doesn't change the weight, so you could weigh frozen and just use that.

    I prefer not to use cooked weight as it can be affected by cooking method and time. If I crucify a steak and cook it well done, it will weigh a lot less than a steak of the same raw weight cooked rare. The calories will be the same though!
  • kiela64
    kiela64 Posts: 1,447 Member
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    livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
    I portion out a lot of my meat before putting it in the freezer. Freezing doesn't change the weight, so you could weigh frozen and just use that.

    I prefer not to use cooked weight as it can be affected by cooking method and time. If I crucify a steak and cook it well done, it will weigh a lot less than a steak of the same raw weight cooked rare. The calories will be the same though!

    Right, but I don’t have access to the uncooked weight. Would a loss of 1/2 weight be reasonable for a well-done piece of chicken or hamburger? Because things usually weigh ~2oz cooked but my mom says it should be about 4oz uncooked (although no one weighs or measures it just guesstimates while cooking). If I’m making my own food I’ll weigh uncooked but they won’t so I don’t have access to that info.
  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,752 Member
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    My chicken doesn't generally lose 50%of its weight and I've never weighed a hamburger after cooking to know...

    If they're homemade can you ask your mum to weigh yours beforehand... Or offer to help her out and weigh them?
  • SweatLikeDog
    SweatLikeDog Posts: 272 Member
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    Nutritional labels are based on raw weight. Cooking dehydrates the meat. In order to factor in the effect of dehydration, you have to account for how much dehydration is caused by cooking. For well done meat, multiply the cooked weight by 1.5, medium 1.3, rare 1.1. These are ballpark estimates based on people weighing meat before and after cooking. You can try it yourself if you're inclined.
  • kiela64
    kiela64 Posts: 1,447 Member
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    SweatLikeDog wrote: »
    Nutritional labels are based on raw weight. Cooking dehydrates the meat. In order to factor in the effect of dehydration, you have to account for how much dehydration is caused by cooking. For well done meat, multiply the cooked weight by 1.5, medium 1.3, rare 1.1. These are ballpark estimates based on people weighing meat before and after cooking. You can try it yourself if you're inclined.

    Thank you! It’s usually always well done so I’ll go with the 1.5
  • kiela64
    kiela64 Posts: 1,447 Member
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    livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
    My chicken doesn't generally lose 50%of its weight and I've never weighed a hamburger after cooking to know...

    If they're homemade can you ask your mum to weigh yours beforehand... Or offer to help her out and weigh them?

    No because I’m usually not there at the time at work or school and food isn’t made like “this is for that person” but in a giant batch and frozen. Asking her to weigh stuff is adding more work and not a reasonable request (she said no 😛)

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