So I'm making turkey chili in the crock pot today...following ingredients:
1 pound Honeysuckle White ground turkey breast (480 cals total)
1 can bush's pinto beans (280 cals)
1 cup frozen whole kernel corn (220 cals)
1 can Hunt's diced tomatoes (90 cals)
1 diced green bell pepper
1 medium onion diced
2 cloves garlic minced
1 15 ounce can Campbell's Tomato Soup (about 300 cals)
My confusion comes in with...how many servings IS this? I'm trying to figure calories per serving, but how would I know without knowing how many servings it turns into? I can add it up and divide it into 8 servings or 10 or 12 or whatever - but that's hard to figure when dipping it out of a pot.
Usually when I do a recipe like this - where I have no idea the servings. I usually go with 8 if it is a large recipe. If I seem to get more or less then 8 out of it I adjust later. I am not one of those people who pre-measures the whole recipe.
I hope someone has some better advice, I am interested as to what other people do.
I usually figure out the total calories for the pot, then figure out how many calories I want per serving, and use that as a guideline.
I portion my food into individual portions right from the pot. So let's say I made a recipe that makes 4 portions (which is pretty standard for me). I'd divide my recipe in 4. Then I'd get out 4 containers (either the dinner plates we're using that night, or tupperware to store the leftovers). I dish out equally into the 4 containers (for things like chili, I take 1 ladlefull at a time, add to each dish, and repeat until the meal is equally divided). I could weigh it also, but I'm not that concerned about them being exactly equal.
See, I've been making stuff like this, that involves pasta and meat or rice or whatever, and transferring the completed dish into a 9X13 pan to portion it out into six servings or eight or whatever...but that's gonna be hard with this. I wish I could wave a magic wand over the crock pot and figure out servings by the cup...
Guess I could also figure out how many cups of everything I'm putting into the crock pot as I put it in, add them all together and get a pretty good idea of the total number of cups, huh?
Well, I know that one scoop of my soup ladle is about one cup. I often use that to measure stuff like this.
I have also been know to fill whatever it is I am using to cook with water and then measure how much water was in my pot or whatever. This way I know my pot holds 12-14 cups. So I have approx 12-14 cups of whatever it is I made. If that makes sense.
So I put my chili in the crock pot at lunch. It came out to 14 total cups of "stuff" from beans to corn to cooked turkey and veggies, soup, tomatoes and stock. I reduced that down to about 12 cups, assuming there will be some shrinkage as it cooks.
By my calculations, this comes out to 1 cup = 124 calories, 1 g. fat, 0 saturated fat, 26 cholesterol, 466 sodium, 18 carbs, 3 fiber and 14 protein...
Seems low, but that's how the numbers measured out...cool!
Generally, recipes with one pound of meat are divided into 4 servings, but something like chili (or any other "full meal" recipe) is usually more like six or eight servings per lb of meat. I usually do eight with chili (or about 1.5 cups).
Serving confusion - help!
