Estimating Calories in Homemade Soup
 

If I may pick the collective brain here... for the purposes of calorie counting, how many would you assign to a bowl of homemade soup? We're talking completely homemade, even the broth. From scratch. Chicken and veggies, no noodles, rice or beans. No cream or anything - essentially broth, chicken meat and veggies. I've been estimating between 150 to 200 cals per bowl, depending on how 'brothy' it is. Does this seem about right?

sparkpeople.com has a recipe calculator that I use when I make things from scratch

I wish I could be of more help and I hope you can get something figured out :hug:

I was wondernig this same thing yesterday - like exactly - except mine had some barley in it. I would say your estimate sounds pretty reasonable to me.

I've used recipe calculators, but I find them frustrating for a 'recipe' like this that isn't a recipe, but rather a technique. I don't even really know how many servings a batch is, and the quantities never come out the same twice. I'm hoping to avoid having to weigh/measure every thing along every step, every time I make soup - I know myself, the frustration would have me making much less soup. I'm OK with estimates for a light soup like this.

I looked up the calories in similar canned soups like Progresso to get my estimated calories. Does that seem like a reasonable comparison? For back-of-the-envelope counting, that is?

I don't estimate, I create a new recipe in DietPower, ingredient by laborious ingredient. If I don't know exactly how many servings it'll make, I weigh the whole amount of soup when it's finished. Then I name the soup "My Veggie Soup 950g" (or whatever) and when I reheat a portion, I weigh it out and enter 120/950 as the serving size (always supposing it weighed 120g).

The only way to do this is to add up the calories for the individual ingredients and divide the total by the number of servings. Guessing leads to too big portions for the calories alloted.

I love this idea.

When I serve myself a bowl of homemade soup, I do a trick to figure out broth-to-solids. I dip the one cup measure into the soup, but lean it against the edge so I only get broth. That way I have one cup of broth. Then I use a slotted spoon to get half a cup of solids. I find it easier to measure that way.

I take miso soup to lunch almost every day. I save my bones from the week, put them in the crock pot on the weekend to make broth. Then in the mornings I put a cup of broth into a Pyrex measuring cup and nuke it until it's simmering. I stir in a spoonful of miso paste, and sometimes add crumbled dry mushrooms, a splash of hot sauce or vinegar (or both), and maybe some herbs (depending on my mood). I pour it into a pre-heated Thermos, and add a pat of butter before closing it up. I get a nice warm, protein and fat filled dish at lunch that (along with a little salad or roll-ups) keeps me full all afternoon.