Is there an easier way to portion out soups and stews?
 

I've been a calorie counter for 3+ years, but still have problems with this. Since I'm single, most of the time it's easy to make only what I'll eat at that meal and count everything. If I make a larger "solid" dish, those are pretty simple to portion out evenly. But soups and stews?

I've tried 2 different things:
- Taking the whole batch and, cup-by-cup, transferring it into another pot. This gives me the number of total cups, I can decide what a portion is, and track from there.
- Weighing the whole batch on my digital food scale (again, this requires transfer to another pot or large tupperware) and dividing by number of servings to determine the calories in one serving.

Am I missing something? I know it's all an estimate anyway, and of course not every portion will have the same amount of meat, veggies, sweet potato, whatever. But I'm trying to find the most accurate, least messy/time-consuming way to do this.

Thoughts?

Something that helped me was using my digital food scale and making sure I have all the same tupperware containers. Then, I make sure each container is the same weight, and divide the recipe calories by the number of containers I wind up with. It might save you a step!

This is what I do:

I measure the ingredients going in. I usually make bean/lentil soups and the legumes and olive oil are the primary calories in the dish. I measure those as they go in. I add up the TOTAL CAlories in the dish, then, including any specific calories from something calorie dense and/or from any canned or frozen products I have added. I assume some calories from the veggies, but don't really count them.

Once I have the total calories in the dish, I decide about how many calories I want in each serving (200 to 300, usually, preferably on hte lower end) and figure out the minimum number of servings I need to get to my goal. Then I portion out servings, and generally get 1 extra serving which will probably account for my veggie calories in the meal(s).

It is really easy and I feel like I am in complete control.

Total the entire calories in the pot. You get the figures for each ingredient as you add to the pot. Have handy containers whaterver serving you think you might want , one cup, half a cup whatever you decide , divide your servings into entire amount and you will have the calories for each serving. I freeze several individula servings so I am not eatibng the same soup/stew every day.

I make a big pot, figure out the calories, then portion into how ever many containers it takes (for example, I made lentil soup, did 2 ladles into freezer bags, it took 8 freezer bags) and then divide by the total number of calories. So I take the calories for the pot, divide by 8, that's the number in each bag. If one is more, one is less and it all equal out.

I figure all ingredients as it goes in then use a muffin pan to portion out and freeze. Divide calories out to per muffin size.

I figure out the total, then divide by servings. I often freeze my soups/stews in 1 cup portions for lunch, 1.5 cup portions for dinner.

I weigh all ingredients and calculate total calories for the dish. After it's done cooking I weigh it again. Divide total calories by total grams (or ounces if you prefer) and get calories per gram.

I don't do "servings," just c/g. That way I can weigh out however much I want at a given time.

Ack!! THANK YOU! This is so helpful. I was already doing what others have posted, and also weighing all ingredients. But, for some reason, I never thought of doing a cal/gr calculation. This is genius! :)

You're welcome! Glad to help :D

I was having this same problem! I make a huge pot of soup and plug all the ingredients into the recipe maker, then I was guesstimating how many cups. Ugh, completely unreliable. I will definitely weigh it next time. Thank you!
One question, though, why weigh it before and after? Can you just weigh it after and figure from there?
So glad I found this thread :)

I use the divide into serving size and then figure the total calories per serving. The extra step is that I then write it down in my recipe book as well so that when I'm trying to come up with menu ideas, I have some idea of what's what. My cookbooks -- including my home made one of my favorite recipes -- are the only books where I still want a hard copy as opposed to electronic.

I weigh each ingredient before to calculate the calories going into the dish. I weigh the dish after cooking (and subtract the weight of the pan) afterwards because sometimes the total weight changes during the cooking process. For example, when a pot of soup is left uncovered it loses weight while the steam carries water up out of the dish. Does that make sense to you?

Also I don't weigh 0 calorie ingredients like water when I put them in, so I need to takeake it into account after the dish is done cooking.

I love this! Thank you!!!