Recording marinade calories??

The relative doneness pretty much has nothing to do with what will burn or melt off the surface of meat when cooked. Oil does not penetrate but is merely a medium. The acids are what penetrate breaking down the tissue and making more tender.

I do know that, but you were asking how much of the fat renders off .... I'd say that my steak which is on the grill for less than 4 minutes has less render out than someone else's well done steak. Most of the time, it's my chef husband who does the cooking around here, and I just ask him how much with calories is on my portion, and how much:)

Correct! That is an issue of fat content of the steak and not the marinade. When I refered to rendering I meant of the fat from the marinade.

Enter the marinade as a recipe with one serving. Weigh the marinade as prepared (before adding meat). Weigh again after the meat is removed. Calculate the percent of the marinade absorbed by the meat:

(Weight before - weight after) / weight before

You should get a number between 0 and 1. 1 would indicate that all of the marinade was absorbed (never gonna happen) so you will expect a number far lower than one. So, if you get 0.2, you know that the steak absorbed 20% of the marinade. If you ate the whole steak, you would add the weight of the meat and 0.2 servings of marinade.

Happy math!

This post is 2 years old but I'm bumping it because I need to save it. I have been looking everywhere for a precise way to calculate a marinade I love and it's not just oil-based and not a paste, etc. So this is perfect. I calculated that 60% of my marinade made it on to the meat, and then did adjusted each ingredient to be 60% of the original amount. THANK YOU!!

This is an old thread... but I was wondering this myself today due to the amount of chicken we tend to marinate and grill - it seems like we're doing it every week lately. Based on what the post from the Chef said and my results thus far though, I am going to continue to not worry about it.

Just for some context... I typically use Marzetti Sweet Italian Dressing as a marinade and depending on the amount of chicken, it could end up 3/4 of more of a jar. I let it sit for 2 days in the fridge like this. Not all of it soaks up but I do pour it on as it's cooking so we don't really waste much at all. We're talking 5-6lbs of chicken, so 6 - 7 breasts typically - each breast cut in half to make them thinner. They typically come out nice and juicy. Fantastic I might even say. LOL, I just ate some and want more already

2 tbsp of the dressing is 140 cals, and a jar is 13 servings.. That would be 1820 cals total, and if you were to try and evenly divide this by each resulting breast piece, it would be about 12 pieces for a 6 breast pack or 151.67 per piece. Of course, this isn't exact due to the size variations, absorption rate differences, etc.

I do not factor these cals in at all, and with my normal exercise of walking and 1500 cals a day intake (sometimes more if I decide to eat into the exercise calories), I'm still maintaining about 1.7lbs a week loss, give or take. I should probably be counting these calories - and the sodium, etc. but I'm happy at this point. I suspect if I wasn't losing to my satisfaction, I'd probably start looking deeper and figure it out down to the calorie, but right now there's no need in my book.