How do you count calories in a homecooked meal?

Say if I wanted to cook beef stew, how do I go about counting the calories?

I'm assuming that say, you measure the beef, how many oz. How many carrots you're putting into it, potatoes etc. and then what? lol do you add it all up and get the entire pot's caloric value? Then break it down by servings?

Use the recipe analyzer (under foods) - it will go a lot quicker.

thanks you're soooooo helpful.. :D

Seconded.  It's a lifesaver for stir fries, stews, etc. which have way too many ingredients to want to enter separately.  (Especially if you're going to be eating leftovers later!)

I love the Recipe analyzer too. And you can tag the recipe if it is something you will make again. I keep all of my favourite recipes in the tagged section including desserts, main courses, salads and breads! That way you can cook and bake to your hearts content (I love to do both) and enjoy your own efforts! And it helps you decide if that treat or special meal is really worth it in the end and helps make your favourite recipes even healthier!

Good luck!

thank you!!

If you are serving a family meal with meat and side dishes, here's what I do.  I put my plate on the digital food scale and zero it out.  Then I add my meat or fish and write that down, then I zero it out again and add the next side dish.  After dinner I log what I wrote down.

I use the Recipe Analyzer a lot, and also tag groups of ingredients so that I can click on the tag group and add it all at once.

There is a wonderful website called recipezaar.com.  You can obtain recipes for anything off from it.  It shows all the nutritional values and also the calories per serving.  I use this for alot of stews, soups, etc. 

I go about it the old fashioned way, I take each ingredient, figure out the cals/fat, add it all up and divide by the number of servings each dish will provide. I do this with baking, cooking specific dishes, etc. I also keep a hard copy of each dish broken down that I can refer to in the future. I know it takes more time, but I feel a lot more confident about my results than trusting some web site.

Fair enough, but that's exactly what the recipe analyzer here does.  You can even double check the numbers it's using for each ingredient (and switch the ingredient if, for example, it picks uncooked rice and you wanted cooked rice).

My problem is that the recipe analyzer doesn't seem to recognize alot of the ingredients and red flags them. 

I have had that problem too. It doesn't recognize some brands or ingredients, and I've been forced to add a note to my recipes, telling what the correct cals/grams of fat are really.

I agree.  I've tried several times to add recipes and it's never worked.  Always red flags something, even an ingredient already in the food browser.  I finally just gave up.

Robin (and/or everyone else)- I wonder if the problem could be because of not adding the numbers in brackets right next to the ingredient?

Let's pretend that Stop & Shop low fat cottage cheese has the exact or close to the same calories/protein, etc as your Great Value low fat cottage cheese so you would need to add numbers inside 2 brackets right next to the ingredient like so:

Low fat cottage cheese [112339]

You would find the number at the end of the url in your web broswer like this:

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-stop-s hop-low-fat-cottage-i112339

It solved MOST of my problems but yes, sometimes I have to resort to paper or just keep in mind that the calories/nutrient ratio is off for that recipe.

pleaser hlep I still cant find the recipe analazar.

Lucille

Don't feel bad, bianckino.  I couldn't find it, either.  First, you have to click on the FOODS tab at the top of your screen, then click on OVERVIEW, then you'll see RECIPE ANALYZER.

Well, darn, amandief, thanks soooooooo much.  I had never even heard of that number until recently.   Then I started noticing several times that people referred to that number and I could never find it.  I kept pulling up different foods and couldn't see any number.  And, there it is!!!  Up in the website address line.  Thanks so very much!  I'm going to try enter my chili recipe when I get home this afternoon and see what happens.  I appreciate your response.

Thanks you so much for telling where to find the food numbers for the Recipe Analyzer. I thought these were somewhere in the Calorie Count website. I am going to give the Recipe Analyzer another try. Best to you....

I bought a GetSmart scale to help with issues like this.  It allows me to sum the calories and nutritional values of each ingredient as I add it to the mixing bowl or plate.  I've found this scale extremely helpful with portion control as well. 

Check out their Demo section on the web site.  They do a great job of showing you what it can do.  I ordered mine from Amazon.

http://www.eatsmartproducts.com/

The only problem with the recipe analyzer is that I do not think it always looks for the most calorie correct food.  I have done it both ways...withthe analyzer and adding up each separate item.. I find that when I add each item, get a total and divide by the number of servings, the calorie count tends to be more accurate.

That works well for me, too. Recipe Analyzer just isn't that accurate.