Hi all, we grilled hamburgers today. My patty was 200g raw and then cooked 132g. I don't really know the lean/fat content, we get our organic beef free b/c my in-laws raise cows. So anyway, what baffles me is the mass amount of calorie difference here *according to 3FC food calorie counter*

per 100grams

Beef, ground, 70% lean / 30% fat, patty cooked, pan-broiled 238 Calories

Beef, ground, 70% lean / 30% fat, raw 332 Calories

So that would mean that raw my patty was 664 Cal but cooked it was only 314.16??? I mean it wasn't "pan-broiled" it was on the outdoor grill but that's as close as I could get for cooking method.

How does it lose half its calories? I mean I know some fat drips off but is this for real? What should I count this as?

I suspect it is because of the grease draining off but there could also be water loss. How well are you cooking these? For instance my mother is paranoid about pork so cooks her porkchops until they're bone dry so they weigh considerably less than a similar juicy porkshop but the biggest difference is water loss. I use the raw measurement and stick with that. But that's me.

Thanks Misora.

I'm not exactly sure how it works, either, but I think Misora's onto something! I'm a big huge fan of the Jennie-O Turkey Burgers partially because they're pre-portioned and it takes a lot of the hassle out of it for me ... but out of curiosity I did weigh one after cooking it once and it was a bit less than the raw/frozen state it started out in.

There's a significant amount of water loss in cooking, so a patty that uses 100g of raw beef will cook down to something like 70g. Or a 100g cooked patty started off as 135g of raw meat. Figures are made up, but you get the idea.

Fat has 9 Calories per gram, while protein has 4 Calories per gram -- you can lose a significant amount of Calories through fat dripping off and some of the protein breaking down during cooking.

so if you cook on the grilled should you measure the before or after weight?

You should measure the before weight, because everyone likes their meat cooked to a different degree, so the water loss will be different.

The amount of fat that drains off (unless you boil the meat first - yuck!) is negligible. I used to have a link to a study where they measured the fat content of food after cooking it by different methods, but it's not on my new computer. I'll see if I can find it.