Weighing Chicken with bone in like drummettes

GenCas437
GenCas437 Posts: 4 Member
edited December 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
Does chicken with the bone in just naturally have more calories? And what is the best way to weigh it - raw or cooked? For example, today I weighed 6 chicken drummettes raw and they weighed 11.6oz. I weighed them again when they were finished cooking in the air fryer, and they weighed 5.2oz... They were a bit shriveled, I think because I may have overcooked them a tad, but still, that's a big difference. 220ish calories vs almost 500 calories. Which weight should have been used to enter them in my food diary?

Replies

  • bpetrosky
    bpetrosky Posts: 3,911 Member
    Use the raw weight and a database entry for raw chicken. The change in weight after cooking is mostly from water coming out of the meat.
  • lin_be
    lin_be Posts: 393 Member
    What entry are using in your diary: raw or cooked weight? The package should tell you. If you don’t have a package, choose the corresponding cooking method in the database (cooked if you’re using 5.2 or raw if you’re using 11.6).
  • GenCas437
    GenCas437 Posts: 4 Member
    Unfortunately, I've found the database a little frustrating with some foods. People are allowed to enter foods into the database without specifying cooking method, any important ingredients, or prep-style like skin on, skin off. Two very similar looking entries can have very different nutritional stats for the same amount of food. 1 chicken thigh in the air fryer can weigh 135 calories...or it can weigh 327 calories.

    Specifics can't always be found. If I specify a food followed by "air fryer" or "air fried" for *anything* I immediately get stuff like onion rings and okra followed by a bunch of other foods I didn't type. I did manage to find one entry for air fried chicken drummettes, which was 240 for 6 drummettes (no weight option). Generic Chicken Drummettes are 330 for 6 wings (no weight option). I don't have the original packaging for the wings - they were given to me by a friend, but I know they were Walmart brand, so looking up Great Value drummettes, I get no indication if the entry is for raw or cooked, so they are either 221 calories for 5.2 cooked or 493 for 11.6 raw....Just a bit frustrating :-/

    Will just assume raw here and enter the larger weight for today's log.
  • lin_be
    lin_be Posts: 393 Member
    I always do raw and have had much success. It eliminates the cooking method altogether and is pretty accurate!
  • Fatty_Nuff
    Fatty_Nuff Posts: 273 Member
    I always rely on the National Chicken Council for data. 222 calories for uncooked and 290 for a cooked chicken wing. Based on a 3.5 ounce serving, adjust accordingly. I would use the same data for the drumette and the second segment.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    What I do when I'm entering in ingredients into the recipe creator is double check them with the USDA's database. So for instance, there is an entry in the USDA's database for raw bone-in skin-on chicken thighs. I'll see how many calories they tell me X grams is and then compare that with various entries on MFP.

    And yeah, not all packaging will give you the calories. I typically get meat from a butcher counter and there is definitely no nutrition information on the printed out labels. Weight, yes, nutrition no.
This discussion has been closed.

Categories