How To Use The Recipe Builder
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callsitlikeiseeit
Posts: 8,627 Member
One of the first things us 'old timers' advise those new to MFP learn to do first, is to learn how to weigh and log your food. Whether your goal is to lose weight or gain weight, you need to know how much you are eating. That's easy enough to do when you are eating a chicken breast and salad, but how do you calculate calories if you cook larger 'family style' or batch recipes, like soups, chili, or casseroles? Or homemade bread or (shhh) cake?
One of the most under-utilized tools on MFP, in my opinion, is the recipe builder. And many who use it, aren't quite using it to its full potential. Coming close, but not quite there. Sometimes by choice, sometimes because its just not realized.
There are a few different ways to do this. None are wrong. This is how I do it, and it is quite effective and works for every single recipe (literally hundreds) over the years. From cakes and breads to soups and chili and casseroles. Some get the finished weight after cooking and subtract the weight of the dish. I find that a pain, I use the 'raw' weight with everything in my diary, with few exceptions.
How to use the recipe builder for large batch recipes:
Weigh out each individual ingredient in your recipe in grams. The easiest way to do this (in a recipe where everything is combined, like a quiche or a casserole) is to add it to a bowl and tare, or zero out the food scale in between each ingredient. This way you are not getting a dozen bowls dirty. Write down each weight. Then total it up when you are done adding ALL of your ingredients. For items with 0 calories, such as water, you do not need to add them. For liquid items, such as milk, Measure out the liquid amount per the recipe (such as 1 cup) while the bowl is on the scale, and write down the number of grams that the amount is (example: 1 cup of whole milk is approximately 240 grams)
now, total up how many grams total your recipe is and cook it. each gram will be a serving size. so you will have really large serving sizes of items, because it is in grams.
One thing to be very careful of, is when you are entering the items in MFP, watch the accuracy of the items in the database that come up. I almost always have to replace items that pop up with accurate ones and sometimes it takes some searching to find a correct one.
Your finished recipe builder recipe will look something like this (items/ amounts made up just for simplicity)
eggs 100 gram
cheese 50 gram
onion 20 gram
mushroom 20 gram
spinach 10 gram
milk 240 grams
servings per recipe = 440 (because the recipe equals 440 grams)
your number of servings will equal how many grams you put on your plate. This is more accurate than guessing how many actual servings are in the dish (ie: 4, 6, 8, etc). Although If you are the only one eating it, it all equals out in the end. Servings don't make sense for many (including my household) because a serving size for my husband (who needs to gain weight) is double, triple my serving size. so, whose serving size do we go by? His? Mine? Somewhere in the middle? Going by grams, it makes no difference and is more accurate for both of us. If I want seconds, and know I have 200 calories left for the day, know the portion i had was 400 calories... i know i can weigh out about half as many grams as I originally did and be within those calories.
Just as when you first start logging your food and it feels slow and cumbersome, so can using the recipe builder. But the more you use it, the more comfortable you get with it.
Just a note.... On the phone app, you can search your recipes. On the desktop version you can not. For someone like me with hundreds of recipes in there, who prefers the desktop over the phone app... you can imagine what a pain this is. About the only time i use the phone app, is when I am looking for a specific recipe to add to my diary.
I am sure others will come in with their own tips and tricks for the recipe builder or logging and hopefully help those of you who are new to this get the hang of things so that reaching your goals is a little bit easier! And, as I said, there are a few ways to do this, and none are wrong. This is how *I* do it. Take what I have provided, take tips that I'm sure others will chime in with, and find your path to success!
One of the most under-utilized tools on MFP, in my opinion, is the recipe builder. And many who use it, aren't quite using it to its full potential. Coming close, but not quite there. Sometimes by choice, sometimes because its just not realized.
There are a few different ways to do this. None are wrong. This is how I do it, and it is quite effective and works for every single recipe (literally hundreds) over the years. From cakes and breads to soups and chili and casseroles. Some get the finished weight after cooking and subtract the weight of the dish. I find that a pain, I use the 'raw' weight with everything in my diary, with few exceptions.
How to use the recipe builder for large batch recipes:
Weigh out each individual ingredient in your recipe in grams. The easiest way to do this (in a recipe where everything is combined, like a quiche or a casserole) is to add it to a bowl and tare, or zero out the food scale in between each ingredient. This way you are not getting a dozen bowls dirty. Write down each weight. Then total it up when you are done adding ALL of your ingredients. For items with 0 calories, such as water, you do not need to add them. For liquid items, such as milk, Measure out the liquid amount per the recipe (such as 1 cup) while the bowl is on the scale, and write down the number of grams that the amount is (example: 1 cup of whole milk is approximately 240 grams)
now, total up how many grams total your recipe is and cook it. each gram will be a serving size. so you will have really large serving sizes of items, because it is in grams.
One thing to be very careful of, is when you are entering the items in MFP, watch the accuracy of the items in the database that come up. I almost always have to replace items that pop up with accurate ones and sometimes it takes some searching to find a correct one.
Your finished recipe builder recipe will look something like this (items/ amounts made up just for simplicity)
eggs 100 gram
cheese 50 gram
onion 20 gram
mushroom 20 gram
spinach 10 gram
milk 240 grams
servings per recipe = 440 (because the recipe equals 440 grams)
your number of servings will equal how many grams you put on your plate. This is more accurate than guessing how many actual servings are in the dish (ie: 4, 6, 8, etc). Although If you are the only one eating it, it all equals out in the end. Servings don't make sense for many (including my household) because a serving size for my husband (who needs to gain weight) is double, triple my serving size. so, whose serving size do we go by? His? Mine? Somewhere in the middle? Going by grams, it makes no difference and is more accurate for both of us. If I want seconds, and know I have 200 calories left for the day, know the portion i had was 400 calories... i know i can weigh out about half as many grams as I originally did and be within those calories.
Just as when you first start logging your food and it feels slow and cumbersome, so can using the recipe builder. But the more you use it, the more comfortable you get with it.
Just a note.... On the phone app, you can search your recipes. On the desktop version you can not. For someone like me with hundreds of recipes in there, who prefers the desktop over the phone app... you can imagine what a pain this is. About the only time i use the phone app, is when I am looking for a specific recipe to add to my diary.
I am sure others will come in with their own tips and tricks for the recipe builder or logging and hopefully help those of you who are new to this get the hang of things so that reaching your goals is a little bit easier! And, as I said, there are a few ways to do this, and none are wrong. This is how *I* do it. Take what I have provided, take tips that I'm sure others will chime in with, and find your path to success!
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Replies
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I've used the recipe builder sometimes.
What I don't follow in your method is how you account for the weight of water.
I make soups in slow cooker- if I used your method and then measured a serving in gms my serving would have water weight in it therefore be less calories than just the division of ingredients you listed.
So I weigh the pot first and then know total weight of finished product by measuring finished product in the pot and subtracting pot weight from total then divide that into 100 g servings.
Ie I call a 3000 g total 30 servings. Then easy maths to call my serving say, 3.5 serves.
Or 350 servings if you want to use 1 g serves and say the total makes 3500 serves.
My tip is to use permanent texta to write weight of pot on the bottom of it - that way you only weigh the empty pot once, not every time you use it.3 -
Like @paperpudding , my only diversion from @callsitlikeiseeit 's technique is that I weigh the cooked dish to allows for water evaporated or added during the cooking process.
And I also used a white paint pen to write the tare weight of my fave crock pots on the cooker that stays dry instead of the washable crock, and I keep a little sticky note taped to the inside of my cupboard with the empty weight of my most common casserole and pie pans.2 -
That makes sense.
I think (for me at least, everyone's situation is different, and certainly how they cook) that soup is so low calorie, and I dont eat (drink?) much broth, that it amounts to a fairly small difference that personally, I would just chalk it up to help cover a possible inaccuracy in logging somewhere else. Some people, like my husband, pretty much lick the bowl dry lol
now, back in the days when I'd eat half a loaf of french bread with the soup... all bets were off on any leftovers in the bowl because bread and butter dipped in soup 'juice' is YUMMY LOL0 -
"now, total up how many grams total your recipe is and cook it. each gram will be a serving size. "
You need to input the weight of each raw ingredient but then weight the cooked meal, though, as cooking generally involves loss of moisture and therefore mass, so your raw total will not be the same as the cooked total.3 -
scarlett_k wrote: »"now, total up how many grams total your recipe is and cook it. each gram will be a serving size. "
You need to input the weight of each raw ingredient but then weight the cooked meal, though, as cooking generally involves loss of moisture and therefore mass, so your raw total will not be the same as the cooked total.
same theory as weighing your meat raw but eating it cooked. Which is pretty standard. Most foods are weighed raw.
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callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »scarlett_k wrote: »"now, total up how many grams total your recipe is and cook it. each gram will be a serving size. "
You need to input the weight of each raw ingredient but then weight the cooked meal, though, as cooking generally involves loss of moisture and therefore mass, so your raw total will not be the same as the cooked total.
same theory as weighing your meat raw but eating it cooked. Which is pretty standard. Most foods are weighed raw.
That only applies if you personally eat the whole thing, whatever it is.
Lots of foods lose weight in cooking, usually water loss. In effect, it concentrates the calories in a smaller weight of food. It can be a big change. I regularly see things weigh half as much after cooking, compared to raw weight.
I'll give a simple example of something I made recently. It's a one-food example and very small calories, but the same math/cooking principles apply to casseroles, soups, of whatever complexity and calorie density is - just the proportions differ.
I roasted a small eggplant. Raw weight was 120g. That's a mere 30 calories of raw eggplant, of course. Cooked weight was 81g.
If I set the servings to to 120, and evenly split the eggplant with a roommate, weighing my portion, my half an eggplant is going to weigh 40.5g. 40.5g of eggplant is going to be 15 calories, in reality - half the calories of the original raw eggplant. 40.5 servings out of 120 servings is going to calculate as 10.125 calories, about a third of the calories of the raw eggplant. That would understate the calories I ate.
Now, because it was eggplant, that's a trivial number of calories. If it really were meat, or some multi-ingredient food, and much more calorie dense, I would have underestimated the calories in my portion significantly, if I shared it with others.
I would use the cooked weight in the recipe builder to set the portions, so if I used the recipe builder, I'd set the servings at 81, not 120. When I ate my 40.5g, that would assign the proper calories.
(In reality, I wouldn't use the recipe builder for that, I'd just do the math. Even if it's just one thing, maybe a little oil, I just do the math on cooked weight for my portion. I only use the recipe builder for more complicated things. And in practice, if I know I'll eat the whole thing myself eventually, I might cut something like a quiche in 8 roughly equal servings, use 8 as the servings, and recognize that the calories would work out OK by the time I'd eaten all 8 pieces.)
If I make, say, a veggie lasagna to serve to friends at dinner, using the raw ingredient weight would have me recording *far* fewer calories than I actually ate, if I used the raw weights to set the number of servings, and weighed my cooked portion to determine my serving size. Something like that loses a lot of weight in the oven.
When you weight meat raw, cook it, and eat that whole piece of meat, that's different. Ignoring the potential for a little fat leaving the meat as it cooks, all the calories in the raw meat are in that cooked piece of meat, even though the cooked piece may weigh much less. If one eats that meat by oneself, one eats those calories.1 -
@AnnPT77 Even an old dog can learn new tricks
Thank you for explaining it in a way that clicked.
most stuff we eat is simple but I do use (and think people should know how to use) the builder!
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Some miscellaneous things I have learned with the recipe builder:
I too have hundreds of recipes saved now, and one trick I've used when looking alphabetically (which can be done on mobile or when logging on the browser, but NOT from the builder directly *grumble grumble*) is to standardize naming of recipes. I use "Category: Recipe Name 1g." So if I sort alphabetically, all the chicken recipes are together, or salads, or desserts. I can do this for inspiration or if I'm looking for something in particular.
If I need to edit a recipe (which I do often because I adapt based on what I have on hand), as a workaround to not being able to search on the browser, I search on mobile, edit it to change 1 serving size, then it moves to the top as the most recent recipe. I much prefer using the browser to actually edit the recipes.
I keep a spreadsheet of pan and dish weights to make subtracting that weight easier for the final recipe total, if I'm serving directly out of the pot or casserole dish. Or for those times I forget to tare.
It's almost complete - when it is I'm going to print it out and stick it on the inside of a cabinet (a great place to store reference info without clogging up fridge door space).
One thing I've thought about doing, though it hasn't been strictly necessary yet, is a volume to weight conversion chart for common ingredients. What will often happen when I make a recipe for the first time is that I go ahead and do the volumes and get my weights from that. Which is fine, but it'd be nice to avoid all those extra dishes even the first time. I'm also considering rewriting some of my recipe cards (what can I say, I'm a little bit old fashioned) to include the weights in addition to the volume measurements.
Being able to use the recipe builder has been critical for my weight loss success as a person who cooks most everything from scratch. I never would have known how to maximize its potential without the forums, either. Great thread topic, @callsitlikeiseeit !2 -
callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »@AnnPT77 Even an old dog can learn new tricks Thank you for explaining it in a way that clicked.
most stuff we eat is simple but I do use (and think people should know how to use) the builder!
Yes, that's a great tool. I do use it myself, though probably less often than people with families and such would benefit from doing. Most of my cooking is just cooking one meal's worth of (whatever) for myself, so my diary looks like an ingredients list. 😆 I do use the meals feature pretty often, for - say - a dish that always has about the same base ingredients, but different relative amounts each time: I can bring the meal into my diary with 1 click, then adjust whichever food entries are non-standard amounts in the current situation. Saves time.
This may blow some people's minds, but virtually any *consistent* way of doing things can potentially work for a calorie counting routine, because each of our overall logging practices is going to tend to have a certain average error level over time, and we're likely to adjust our calorie goal to come out in the right place in terms of weight loss rate.
I believe in using/advocating the most accurate methods, as long as they're practical . . . but even though I think what you've been doing has an accuracy issue, I think it could work out fine in a context where one adjusts calorie goal based on weight loss outcomes, because it's consistent.1 -
penguinmama87 wrote: »
Being able to use the recipe builder has been critical for my weight loss success as a person who cooks most everything from scratch. I never would have known how to maximize its potential without the forums, either. Great thread topic
Wish i could edit it to correct where *I* was corrected but I will leave it since the correction came early enough for it not to get lost anywhere.
And also, because it's something I think is important, and something we all see a lot of, is when a poster, such as myself or ANYONE, is corrected (because we are all human, and can all be mistaken and all LEARN), to take that advice and learn from it GRACIOUSLY, and not get mad and defensive. ALL OF US are here to help and/or be helped (some of us, both). I've learned from many of you, and continue to do so, and try to pass along a fraction of that knowledge.
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I just use the Meals function on anything other than something with a set recipe, like a sauce or casserole that is always exactly the same ingredients. Meals (to me) is a much easier tool than recipes.
You can sort Recipes and Meals alphabetically on the web version in the Add Food > Recipes and in the Add Food > Meals lists by using the little drop down "sort" arrow in the top right of the Add Food pages (the lists.)
My solution for recipes is that I just copy the URL of my recipes and I have them on my Excel spreadsheet. Then I can use the "Find" feature on Excel and if I get a few words right - I'm able to find it quickly.
You better believe I learned early-on to name My Recipes using all the major ingredients. Then I only have to get part of it right to have the search work. 3 -
I use the meals a lot, too. I do a lot of sheet pan style dinners and grilled chicken salad... its great for things like that.1
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callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »That makes sense.
I think (for me at least, everyone's situation is different, and certainly how they cook) that soup is so low calorie, and I dont eat (drink?) much broth, that it amounts to a fairly small difference that personally, I would just chalk it up to help cover a possible inaccuracy in logging somewhere else. Some people, like my husband, pretty much lick the bowl dry lol
now, back in the days when I'd eat half a loaf of french bread with the soup... all bets were off on any leftovers in the bowl because bread and butter dipped in soup 'juice' is YUMMY LOL
some soups are low calorie - ones with cream added ( eg cream of cauliflower) are not that low that one can be too slapdash with measuring and calorie recording.
I make a potato, leek, bacon soup with sour cream - very nice if I say so myself - but not all that low calorie.
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paperpudding wrote: »callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »That makes sense.
I think (for me at least, everyone's situation is different, and certainly how they cook) that soup is so low calorie, and I dont eat (drink?) much broth, that it amounts to a fairly small difference that personally, I would just chalk it up to help cover a possible inaccuracy in logging somewhere else. Some people, like my husband, pretty much lick the bowl dry lol
now, back in the days when I'd eat half a loaf of french bread with the soup... all bets were off on any leftovers in the bowl because bread and butter dipped in soup 'juice' is YUMMY LOL
some soups are low calorie - ones with cream added ( eg cream of cauliflower) are not that low that one can be too slapdash with measuring and calorie recording.
I make a potato, leek, bacon soup with sour cream - very nice if I say so myself - but not all that low calorie.
i bet its good though LOL
i dont make any that have cream. well no, i take that back. theres a loaded crock pot mashed potato soup i make in the winter and its stupid high calorie, as you can imagine lol my husband and son love it but i dont hardly touch it
no water in it though LOLOLOL no low calorie ANYTHING in it anywhere1 -
penguinmama87 wrote: »Some miscellaneous things I have learned with the recipe builder:
I too have hundreds of recipes saved now, and one trick I've used when looking alphabetically (which can be done on mobile or when logging on the browser, but NOT from the builder directly *grumble grumble*) is to standardize naming of recipes. I use "Category: Recipe Name 1g." So if I sort alphabetically, all the chicken recipes are together, or salads, or desserts. I can do this for inspiration or if I'm looking for something in particular.
If I need to edit a recipe (which I do often because I adapt based on what I have on hand), as a workaround to not being able to search on the browser, I search on mobile, edit it to change 1 serving size, then it moves to the top as the most recent recipe. I much prefer using the browser to actually edit the recipes.
I keep a spreadsheet of pan and dish weights to make subtracting that weight easier for the final recipe total, if I'm serving directly out of the pot or casserole dish. Or for those times I forget to tare. It's almost complete - when it is I'm going to print it out and stick it on the inside of a cabinet (a great place to store reference info without clogging up fridge door space).
One thing I've thought about doing, though it hasn't been strictly necessary yet, is a volume to weight conversion chart for common ingredients. What will often happen when I make a recipe for the first time is that I go ahead and do the volumes and get my weights from that. Which is fine, but it'd be nice to avoid all those extra dishes even the first time. I'm also considering rewriting some of my recipe cards (what can I say, I'm a little bit old fashioned) to include the weights in addition to the volume measurements.
Being able to use the recipe builder has been critical for my weight loss success as a person who cooks most everything from scratch. I never would have known how to maximize its potential without the forums, either. Great thread topic, @callsitlikeiseeit !
Much more efficient that my previous browser-based search "shortcut."
It's so infuriating the the browser version is not searchable.3 -
Thank you so much for this! I have been too intimidated to use the Recipe Builder for wayyy too long…not anymore! This entire thread is awesome! Since I do mostly big batch cooking for family meals, I think this will help make my logging easier. Again, thanks!1
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406MamaBear wrote: »Thank you so much for this! I have been too intimidated to use the Recipe Builder for wayyy too long…not anymore! This entire thread is awesome! Since I do mostly big batch cooking for family meals, I think this will help make my logging easier. Again, thanks!
just make sure you read the comments about weighing for the final weight- weigh the final product cooked (total weight), not raw to get an accurate calorie count. 1 -
I keep a list of my pots, bowls, instapot liner weights, etc in grams and ounces to make figuring out the final weights easier after cooking. A notes document on my phone has been handy, with photos of the bowl on the scale.
If you make the same recipe often, but the ingredients might change a little each time, you can keep them in the list but change the amount to “zero”. Saves time in searching for them each the next time. So, if your casserole didn’t have broccoli this time but probably will next time, set the weight of broccoli ingredients to zero, rather than deleting broccoli from the ingredient list.
I note in the recipe name if it’s “per100g” or “per14oz” or whatever container I’m dishing it into, if I’m batch cooking ahead of time. And I label the MFP entry the same as the fridge/ freezer container so it’s easy for me to log it in the future.4 -
I keep a list of my pots, bowls, instapot liner weights, etc in grams and ounces to make figuring out the final weights easier after cooking. A notes document on my phone has been handy, with photos of the bowl on the scale.
If you make the same recipe often, but the ingredients might change a little each time, you can keep them in the list but change the amount to “zero”. Saves time in searching for them each the next time. So, if your casserole didn’t have broccoli this time but probably will next time, set the weight of broccoli ingredients to zero, rather than deleting broccoli from the ingredient list.
I note in the recipe name if it’s “per100g” or “per14oz” or whatever container I’m dishing it into, if I’m batch cooking ahead of time. And I label the MFP entry the same as the fridge/ freezer container so it’s easy for me to log it in the future.
And now a standing ovation for you! That's going to change my life!1 -
Great advice! I love the recipe builder and use it all of the time.0
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