Instant pot calorie counts

jmredinger
jmredinger Posts: 23 Member
edited January 2020 in Food and Nutrition
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Hi everyone! I ran into a conundrum last week that is still baffling me. I cooked a chili in my instant pot, but I’m not sure I counted the calories correctly... I weighed each time in grams that I put into the instant pot, then added those up to get the total grams of the recipe (did it this way since I can’t exactly weigh the entire pot once it’s finished.) The total grams came out to 1725, which I inputted in as the serving size. I then scooped out my portion into my bowl. The problem is, my portion only weighed about 350g, which came out to 250cals. This was a VERY hearty portion. I wouldn’t say quite half because there was a little left between my boyfriend and I who used the same size bowls, but I definitely thought I would be double that in terms of grams/calories. I did add about 1 1/2 cups of water to it as it was cooking, I wonder if this threw it off? I’m just not sure what happened and would like to be able to count this accurately in the future. Any help I’d appreciated!

Replies

  • kd_mazur
    kd_mazur Posts: 569 Member
    I think the problem is cooked vs raw. If you weighted everything before it was cooked and are now trying to weigh the cooked portions, you will have variances. I think the best thing would be to take the cooked meal out of the pot and weigh the whole thing cooked and then separate your portion. It will make more dirty dishes but it should make for a more logical calorie count.
  • cdudley628
    cdudley628 Posts: 547 Member
    Yes, definitely weigh after cooking. You may not want to weigh the whole instant pot, but you can weigh each serving as you're serving it out (whether to yourself or other people), then weigh the leftovers as you're transferring them to whatever they'll be stored in. Add it all up and use that rather than the grams before it was cooked. Cooking will typically change the total weight. My fiance has gotten pretty used to me weighing his portions before serving him and never complains.
  • jmredinger
    jmredinger Posts: 23 Member
    That didn’t even occur to me, but now that I think of it, I’m sure that was the issue! Thank you! Having to take all of that out of the instant pot sounds awful, ugh. I guess you gotta do what you gotta do!
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    You have to weigh or measure the finished product because you added water and also because of evaporation. As long as it is hot it will continue to lose weight at a decent rate of speed.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    You can totally weight the whole pot after. If the pot obscures your readout, place a smaller, upturned bowl on the scale first and then the pot on top. Obviously be careful but it's not difficult and I do it all the time.
  • jmredinger
    jmredinger Posts: 23 Member
    MelanieCN77 wrote: »
    You can totally weight the whole pot after. If the pot obscures your readout, place a smaller, upturned bowl on the scale first and then the pot on top. Obviously be careful but it's not difficult and I do it all the time.

    So when you do this, isn’t the instant pot extremely hot? I’m curious how you take the pot out if it’s so hot. Just with regular oven mitts?
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    edited January 2020
    I weigh everything raw as I am putting the dish together and determine how many servings. I then weigh the entire cooked dish and divide by the predetermined number of servings to get the weight per serving. When I log it, I log as 1 serving, not by weight.

    Most of the time I weigh the dish as I am dividing it into individual portions. I eyeball them as I put them onto the plates or leftover containers, then weigh to make sure each one is equal. My scale only goes up to 10kg so a full pot weighs too much for the scale since I use a crock pot rather than an instant pot (I also cook with cast iron which can weigh too much).

    Just make sure you make a note of the weight of the plate or container so you can subtract it when weighing a serving.
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    jmredinger wrote: »
    MelanieCN77 wrote: »
    You can totally weight the whole pot after. If the pot obscures your readout, place a smaller, upturned bowl on the scale first and then the pot on top. Obviously be careful but it's not difficult and I do it all the time.

    So when you do this, isn’t the instant pot extremely hot? I’m curious how you take the pot out if it’s so hot. Just with regular oven mitts?

    you can let it cool a little bit
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    jmredinger wrote: »
    MelanieCN77 wrote: »
    You can totally weight the whole pot after. If the pot obscures your readout, place a smaller, upturned bowl on the scale first and then the pot on top. Obviously be careful but it's not difficult and I do it all the time.

    So when you do this, isn’t the instant pot extremely hot? I’m curious how you take the pot out if it’s so hot. Just with regular oven mitts?

    Make sure you know the weight of the pot before putting food in and check the maximum weight capacity of your scale. Many don't go up very high.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    jmredinger wrote: »
    MelanieCN77 wrote: »
    You can totally weight the whole pot after. If the pot obscures your readout, place a smaller, upturned bowl on the scale first and then the pot on top. Obviously be careful but it's not difficult and I do it all the time.

    So when you do this, isn’t the instant pot extremely hot? I’m curious how you take the pot out if it’s so hot. Just with regular oven mitts?

    I just fold up a towel and use that.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    earlnabby wrote: »
    jmredinger wrote: »
    MelanieCN77 wrote: »
    You can totally weight the whole pot after. If the pot obscures your readout, place a smaller, upturned bowl on the scale first and then the pot on top. Obviously be careful but it's not difficult and I do it all the time.

    So when you do this, isn’t the instant pot extremely hot? I’m curious how you take the pot out if it’s so hot. Just with regular oven mitts?

    Make sure you know the weight of the pot before putting food in and check the maximum weight capacity of your scale. Many don't go up very high.

    My mini weighs 477g and my 5qt 777g - just something you end up remembering!
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    cdudley628 wrote: »
    Yes, definitely weigh after cooking. You may not want to weigh the whole instant pot, but you can weigh each serving as you're serving it out (whether to yourself or other people), then weigh the leftovers as you're transferring them to whatever they'll be stored in. Add it all up and use that rather than the grams before it was cooked. Cooking will typically change the total weight. My fiance has gotten pretty used to me weighing his portions before serving him and never complains.

    Yes, my new Dutch oven weighs 9 pounds and my scale only goes up to 11 pounds, so I get total cooked weight from the weight of the servings plus the leftovers.
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    I’ve been known to use a bathroom scale for crockpot/instapot at times
  • jmredinger
    jmredinger Posts: 23 Member
    Could I similarly do this for noodle dishes? For instance, I make a hamburger helper type dish with macaroni noodles and ground turkey. If I inputted the ingredients into my app and then weighed the total cooked weight which I put type into number of servings, could I then weigh out my portion for an accurate calorie amount? Cooksd noodles have always confused me.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,840 Member
    It should work yes. That's how I log most of my food:
    - weigh and log the raw food
    - weigh the cooked food
    - the weight of the portion divided by the total weight gives you a ratio, which you can then use to calculate the number of calories of that portion
  • houghtalingdavid1278
    houghtalingdavid1278 Posts: 19 Member
    Not sure why I am so baffled by this, I am intelligent person and work in finance but this seems to fleet my mind. So I am making turkey chili tonight in the crockpot. most of the ingredients have the nutrition facts on the label and I am using the whole two packages of ground turkey, about 2-3 cans of beans, crushed tomatoes and and tomato sauce and spices. So basically your saying add all of these items up (just the calories total and not by macros??) and also take the weight of the crockpot, then use a scale after and weigh the food again and take a serving out as a ratio to the total cooked weight? but how do you log that in myfitness pal to get the calories and macros? I saw some people putting it in the "recipe" section and not the "myfoods" section? Seems so much hassle and work and I still can't wrap my head around it.
  • houghtalingdavid1278
    houghtalingdavid1278 Posts: 19 Member
    jmredinger wrote: »
    Could I similarly do this for noodle dishes? For instance, I make a hamburger helper type dish with macaroni noodles and ground turkey. If I inputted the ingredients into my app and then weighed the total cooked weight which I put type into number of servings, could I then weigh out my portion for an accurate calorie amount? Cooksd noodles have always confused me.

    Where are you putting your ingredients in? to the daily "diary" or to the "recipe" section?
  • houghtalingdavid1278
    houghtalingdavid1278 Posts: 19 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    It should work yes. That's how I log most of my food:
    - weigh and log the raw food
    - weigh the cooked food
    - the weight of the portion divided by the total weight gives you a ratio, which you can then use to calculate the number of calories of that portion

    So you weigh the cooked food, I get that. And you get a ratio. I get that as well. But how you know what the macro breakdown is within that portion of the COOKED portion ?

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,840 Member
    edited April 2020
    Weighing and logging the raw food gives you all the info you need, calories and macros, just like logging any other food on MFP.

    I see a lot of people using the recipe section. I actually create meals instead of recipes, but it's the same principle: adding the different foods to it, and then I add the total weight of the cooked dish in the title, so I can calculate the right proportion of a single meal when I consume it.

    Example:
    My original dish weighs 1200gr when cooked and contains, amongst other ingredients, 560 grams of courgette.
    The weight of my portion is 300gr.
    I will then log 0.25 of that original dish as my meal, which will add 0.25 of those 560gr of courgette, and all other foods in that dish, to my meal diary of that day. Calories but also macros, micronutrients... Simply all the info the database entry for that food contains for the quantity indicated.

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