please help me, new to this.

leighs96
leighs96 Posts: 14 Member
in Getting Started
so if i’m making a big meal like spaghetti (healthy) i portion it all out by the serving (4) how do i divide them evenly. like how do i portion it out evenly after it’s been cooked alll together.

Replies

  • L1zardQueen
    L1zardQueen Posts: 8,754 Member
    Do you have a food scale? Or you can use equally sized bowls or plates and eyeball it.
  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    edited February 2021
    Food scale. It's the only way to be sure. I have an Escali I got on Amazon, works great, under $30.

    1. Put a bowl big enough to fit the entire batch in it on the scale, and zero it out (tare).
    2. Transfer all your spaghetti (or whatever) into that bowl, see how much you made all together, in grams.
    3. Divide that number by however many servings you want it to be (in your case, 4) to see how many grams a serving is.
    4. Weigh out your servings into whatever containers you're using.

    You could either put the empty container on the scale, tare, and fill it up to your calculated serving size, or what I usually do is tare the full bowl and then take out a serving size and transfer it into a container, because my scale will go negative. Also, maddeningly, none of my containers weigh the same, and it's a lot of taring to be constantly swapping them around. So if I made 400g of spaghetti and I want 4 servings, I'd zero out the scale with my 400g bowl on it, then transfer spaghetti from the big bowl to a smaller container until the scale reads -100g.
  • jennacole12
    jennacole12 Posts: 1,167 Member
    The best way is to weigh the entire serving to the gram, let’s say it comes out to 1000 g, enter that into number of servings. Then weigh your portion and enter it as the serving... I.e. 250 servings😁
  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    jennacole12 wrote: »
    The best way is to weigh the entire serving to the gram, let’s say it comes out to 1000 g, enter that into number of servings. Then weigh your portion and enter it as the serving... I.e. 250 servings😁

    I do that too - when I'm prepping my weekly batch of breakfast burritos, sometimes I have a little more or a little less of this or that, so I enter the recipe as "per gram" with the amount I made in grams as the number of servings and record how many grams of scrambled eggs/potatoes/whatever I put in my burrito. Also makes it easy to record the snack I have of all the leftover burrito filling once they're assembled, LOL. For stuff like that I round down - made 530g of scrambled eggs, put 50g in each of 10 burritos, eat the leftover 30g.
  • jennacole12
    jennacole12 Posts: 1,167 Member
    goal06082021 wrote: »
    jennacole12 wrote: »
    The best way is to weigh the entire serving to the gram, let’s say it comes out to 1000 g, enter that into number of servings. Then weigh your portion and enter it as the serving... I.e. 250 servings😁

    I do that too - when I'm prepping my weekly batch of breakfast burritos, sometimes I have a little more or a little less of this or that, so I enter the recipe as "per gram" with the amount I made in grams as the number of servings and record how many grams of scrambled eggs/potatoes/whatever I put in my burrito. Also makes it easy to record the snack I have of all the leftover burrito filling once they're assembled, LOL. For stuff like that I round down - made 530g of scrambled eggs, put 50g in each of 10 burritos, eat the leftover 30g.

    It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure this out 😂
  • leighs96
    leighs96 Posts: 14 Member
    goal06082021 wrote: »
    Food scale. It's the only way to be sure. I have an Escali I got on Amazon, works great, under $30.

    1. Put a bowl big enough to fit the entire batch in it on the scale, and zero it out (tare).
    2. Transfer all your spaghetti (or whatever) into that bowl, see how much you made all together, in grams.
    3. Divide that number by however many servings you want it to be (in your case, 4) to see how many grams a serving is.
    4. Weigh out your servings into whatever containers you're using.

    You could either put the empty container on the scale, tare, and fill it up to your calculated serving size, or what I usually do is tare the full bowl and then take out a serving size and transfer it into a container, because my scale will go negative. Also, maddeningly, none of my containers weigh the same, and it's a lot of taring to be constantly swapping them around. So if I made 400g of spaghetti and I want 4 servings, I'd zero out the scale with my 400g bowl on it, then transfer spaghetti from the big bowl to a smaller container until the scale reads -100g.
    goal06082021 wrote: »
    Food scale. It's the only way to be sure. I have an Escali I got on Amazon, works great, under $30.

    1. Put a bowl big enough to fit the entire batch in it on the scale, and zero it out (tare).
    2. Transfer all your spaghetti (or whatever) into that bowl, see how much you made all together, in grams.
    3. Divide that number by however many servings you want it to be (in your case, 4) to see how many grams a serving is.
    4. Weigh out your servings into whatever containers you're using.

    You could either put the empty container on the scale, tare, and fill it up to your calculated serving size, or what I usually do is tare the full bowl and then take out a serving size and transfer it into a container, because my scale will go negative. Also, maddeningly, none of my containers weigh the same, and it's a lot of taring to be constantly swapping them around. So if I made 400g of spaghetti and I want 4 servings, I'd zero out the scale with my 400g bowl on it, then transfer spaghetti from the big bowl to a smaller container until the scale reads -100g.
    goal06082021 wrote: »
    Food scale. It's the only way to be sure. I have an Escali I got on Amazon, works great, under $30.

    1. Put a bowl big enough to fit the entire batch in it on the scale, and zero it out (tare).
    2. Transfer all your spaghetti (or whatever) into that bowl, see how much you made all together, in grams.
    3. Divide that number by however many servings you want it to be (in your case, 4) to see how many grams a serving is.
    4. Weigh out your servings into whatever containers you're using.

    You could either put the empty container on the scale, tare, and fill it up to your calculated serving size, or what I usually do is tare the full bowl and then take out a serving size and transfer it into a container, because my scale will go negative. Also, maddeningly, none of my containers weigh the same, and it's a lot of taring to be constantly swapping them around. So if I made 400g of spaghetti and I want 4 servings, I'd zero out the scale with my 400g bowl on it, then transfer spaghetti from the big bowl to a smaller container until the scale reads -100g.

  • leighs96
    leighs96 Posts: 14 Member
    wow, this helps so much. thank you for taking the time out of your day to explain this to me & sooo well at that. this part of the journey has discouraged me from calorie counting, so thank you so much.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
    leighs96 wrote: »
    wow, this helps so much. thank you for taking the time out of your day to explain this to me & sooo well at that. this part of the journey has discouraged me from calorie counting, so thank you so much.

    its really not hard, it just takes getting used to doing it.

    my diary is open. If you look at it, I have BBQ I made (well, its still currently cooking) for tonights supper. the number of servings is whatever I had the last time I had it (it will change when I dish up tonight, obviously). But its a high number, 150, 250, whatever it is. I created the recipe in the recipe builder, then the total number of grams it is, is how many servings. simple log the number of grams. I do this for so many of my recipes, especially things that are all mixed together (casseroles, baked goods, soups, sauces, etc...)
  • jlval1989
    jlval1989 Posts: 89 Member
    I tend to eyeball things like this.

    Try and dish out evenly as possible, but they're all probably a bit different no matter what you do. One bowl might have a bit more spaghetti, another more sauce, or meatballs, or whatever.

    As long as the whole batch is weighed and logged, the calories will even themselves out as you eat them throughout the week.
  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,129 Member
    jlval1989 wrote: »
    I tend to eyeball things like this.

    Try and dish out evenly as possible, but they're all probably a bit different no matter what you do. One bowl might have a bit more spaghetti, another more sauce, or meatballs, or whatever.

    As long as the whole batch is weighed and logged, the calories will even themselves out as you eat them throughout the week.

    I do this myself, however the evening out across the week only works if you're only cooking for yourself really, if you're cooking for a partner/flatmate/family it gets a bit more inaccurate.

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