I went out and bought a digital food scale because I was tired of guess-timating how much chicken I was eating (and I eat chicken almost every single day).
I cut a chunk of raw chicken, weighed it, and it came in at 5.1 oz. I cooked the chicken, cut it up, and weighed it and it came in at 3.7 oz. I asked my husband if that was right, and he said yes because moisture bakes out of the chicken so it will weigh less once it has baked.
So, I should count the chicken after it has been cooked, right, because obviously I am not eating the moisture that has been baked out? I baked a ton of chicken so I can just cut it up for recipes during the week, so I obviously can't measure it raw now.
Great move in buying a scale, probably the best tool i have, smartest thing i have done.
Typically i use grams, way more accurate than large scale measurement, anyways about your question, i thought long and hard about this myself for some time when i first started counting cals, typically if i don't know i will estimate high on things, now meat is really horrible to be precise with due to different cuts etc... but as far as i can tell the calories are after it is cooked , the only reason i came to this conclusion is why on earth would anyone put calories/weight for raw uncooked foods ? No one is going to eat it like that so why would they ??? Maybe i am wrong in my thinking though ?
Most sources for calorie counts include listings for "cooked" and "raw, yield after cooking." You'll find that they pretty much come out to the same thing - for example, if the food reduces in weight by 30% when cooking, the raw version will be 30% less calorie dense per ounce.
So, just measure and count whichever is more convenient for you on a particular day and a particular dish. There's no need to make calorie counting harder than it has to be.
Really good question. I buy the frozen tenderloins because they thaw faster, and the "raw" weight includes the ice glaze.
The database over at fatsecret dot com lists chicken breast in lots of different ways, and I use the one that indicates skin and bone removed, and stewed. That puts the average breast at 287 calories, so I figure it takes about 3 tenderloins to make one breast. (There is a joke in there, somewhere).
I don't especially enjoy weighing cooked chicken, it's kind of a messy deal sometimes. I usually guestimate based on the number of tenderloins put in the recipe and divided by the number of servings. Sometimes it is a scientific wild-*** guess (SWAG).
You just need to decide which way you're going to measure, and look up the calorie count for that - either chicken raw, or chicken cooked. If you're cooking a bunch in advance, you should look up the calories for cooked chicken since you'll be adding it to your food already cooked. If you're making a recipe, it's easier to count the raw calories so you can measure before you add it to the pan. Ounce for ounce, the calories in raw chicken will be lower than the calories in cooked chicken, but once it's cooked, it all comes out the same.
I don't bother weighing chicken anymore (I know, I probably should...I trust my eyeballing skills. I've weighed enough chicken breasts to know approximately what the ounces look like). But when I did, I would thaw the chicken, rinse it, pat it dry, then weigh it. I didn't want to weigh ice glaze or water. Then on my calorie counter, I would select "skinless boneless chicken breast, raw."
There is usually an option for cooked, and on some counters, there's even roasted, steamed, fried, etc. But that gets less and less accurate because there are too many variables. The longer you bake it, the more water will evaporate out, and the drier it'll get. So 5 oz moist juicy baked chicken breast has a different calorie composition than a 5 oz chicken breast that's been baked so long it's dry as leather. But they would be counted the same if you had selected "5 oz chicken breast, baked." If you measured it raw, and it was, say, 8 oz, then you could cook it however you wanted for however long you wanted, and it would still have the same amount of calories.
In short, weigh and record the weight when it is thawed, dry, and raw.
I measure mine raw. I buy a lot at one time, cut it up and measure it into the protions I want and then I freeze them. That way I can just pull a bag out of the freezer whenever I want.
Great move in buying a scale, probably the best tool i have, smartest thing i have done.
Typically i use grams, way more accurate than large scale measurement, anyways about your question, i thought long and hard about this myself for some time when i first started counting cals, typically if i don't know i will estimate high on things, now meat is really horrible to be precise with due to different cuts etc... but as far as i can tell the calories are after it is cooked , the only reason i came to this conclusion is why on earth would anyone put calories/weight for raw uncooked foods ? No one is going to eat it like that so why would they ??? Maybe i am wrong in my thinking though ?
Unfortunately, you are not completely right. Most instructions call for raw uncooked weights for calorie computation prior to cooking. You weight each ingredient before cooking for most recipes. Then, if a recipe is supposed to serve 4/6/8 you can compute a more accurate per serving calorie count by dividing either each ingredient's calories or the total of all the ingredients by the number of servings.
Sometimes cooked meat is called for, but usually it's very specifically called for.
Weighing chicken: raw vs. cooked
