When cooking chicken at home, one of the most common dilemmas people face is deciding whether to weigh the chicken raw or after cooking. This seemingly simple choice actually has significant implications for nutrition tracking, portion control, and recipe accuracy In this comprehensive guide, we’ll examine the core factors involved to help you determine the best weighing approach for your needs
Why It Matters
Weighing chicken is important for several key reasons
-
Accurate nutrition facts: Raw chicken contains more moisture and therefore weighs more. Nutrition info like calories and macros are calculated based on raw weight. So for precise tracking, raw weights are ideal.
-
Portion sizes: Many recipes specify raw chicken weights. Weighing after cooking may lead to smaller portions than intended.
-
Consistency: Raw weights provide a standardized starting point unaffected by cooking methods. This improves recipe success and meal planning.
So whether you’re tracking macros, following recipes, or controlling portions, weighing raw chicken provides the most consistent and accurate baseline. But what exactly changes when chicken is cooked?
What Happens When Chicken is Cooked
Two key factors cause chicken to lose weight during cooking:
Moisture Loss
Raw chicken is about 75% water. When heated, the moisture evaporates, reducing the weight. Studies show chicken can lose 15-30% of its initial weight from moisture loss alone.
Fat Rendering
In high-fat cuts like thighs and skin-on breasts, cooking melts away some of the fat, further dropping the weight.
These two effects combined can significantly reduce the final cooked weight versus the initial raw weight. The degree of change depends on factors like cooking method, temperature, and duration.
Weighing Raw vs Cooked: Key Differences
Given the impact of cooking, weighing raw and cooked chicken produce very different measurements:
Raw chicken includes all inherent moisture and fat. It provides the baseline weight for nutrition info and recipes.
Cooked chicken weighs less due to moisture and fat loss. The exact weight depends on uncertain variables like cooking technique.
For accuracy and consistency, nutrition experts and chefs overwhelmingly recommend weighing chicken raw. But what are some best practices for raw weighing?
How to Weigh Raw Chicken Properly
Follow these tips for accurate raw chicken weights:
-
Use a digital kitchen scale for precision. Look for one with grams/ounces and a tare function.
-
Always tare or zero out the scale before adding chicken. This excludes the dish’s weight.
-
Weigh chicken in its original state. For marinated chicken, weigh before marinating.
-
For whole chickens, weigh them with bones and skin intact.
-
Note weights right away. Additional handling after weighing can change the mass.
-
Repeat weights multiple times for accuracy, especially with large batches.
By following proper raw weighing techniques, you can get reliable baseline measurements for cooking, nutrition tracking, and portion control.
What About Weighing Cooked Chicken?
While raw weights are ideal, there are some cases where cooked weights can be useful:
-
Estimating total nutrition, especially calories, when raw weights are unknown. Be mindful it’s less accurate.
-
Determining portion sizes of cooked chicken like rotisserie chicken.
-
When following diet plans focused specifically on cooked weights.
If weighing cooked chicken, bear in mind:
-
Let chicken rest before weighing to redistribute moisture for accuracy.
-
Weigh right after cooking while hot to minimize moisture reabsorption.
-
Account for any marinades, breading, or cooking fats that may skew weights.
-
Understand the margin of error is higher than raw weights.
For everyday cooking and nutrition tracking, raw chicken weights remain the gold standard. But cooked weights can still provide helpful estimates when needed.
Factors That Impact Weight Loss
Not all cooking methods lead to equal moisture and fat loss. Some key factors that influence weight reduction:
-
High temperatures cause greater moisture evaporation from the chicken.
-
Longer cooking increases moisture loss over time.
-
Grilling exposes the chicken to direct heat, dropping moisture rapidly.
-
Steaming/poaching cook gently, retaining more moisture in chicken.
-
Skin-on cuts lose less moisture thanks to the protective fat layer.
-
Bone-in chicken retains more moisture than boneless.
-
Marinades help retain moisture and lower weight loss.
Understanding how different cooking conditions, preparations, and techniques affect chicken can help you estimate final cooked weights.
Putting it Into Practice
When using chicken in recipes, apply these raw vs cooked weighing tips:
-
For meal prepped dishes, weigh chicken raw to ensure accurate tracking.
-
If marinating, weigh raw chicken before marinating.
-
For casseroles, weigh chicken raw even though it cooks in the dish.
-
For chicken salads and sandwiches, raw weights allow you to mix and match servings.
-
For rotisserie chicken, use cooked weights listed on the package.
-
For stir fries, consider that high heat can significantly reduce raw weights.
Adjusting recipes and cooking to account for the impacts of cooking on weight takes kitchen skills and experience. But using the right raw or cooked weights for your purpose will set you up for success.
Common Questions about Weighing Chicken
Does weighing raw vs cooked matter for calories?
For rough estimates, cooked weights can provide a ballpark idea. But for truly accurate calorie counts, raw weights remain ideal as the starting point.
How much does chicken shrink during cooking?
On average, expect 15-30% weight loss depending on factors like cut, bone-in vs boneless, cooking method, etc. Chicken breasts tend to shrink more than fattier thighs.
Where can I find nutrition info for cooked chicken?
Some sources provide info for cooked chicken but the cooking method must be specified. Due to variability, raw data is more standardized for tracking.
What about high-fat chicken like thighs?
Even with thighs, weighing raw is best for accuracy. Understand that rendered fat also contributes to weight loss. Go with raw weights for consistency.
Does cooking temperature impact weight loss?
Yes, higher temperatures increase moisture evaporation leading to greater weight reductions.
What if I’m using pre-cooked chicken?
With rotisserie chicken, rely on nutrition info provided by the store, understanding it is an estimate. Weigh pieces for portioning.
How does bone-in vs boneless affect weight loss?
Bone-in chicken retains more moisture during cooking. Weigh your preference raw, but understand bone-in may have less reduction.
Can I estimate raw weight from cooked chicken?
As a very rough estimate, add about 25-30% to the cooked weight to approximate the raw weight. But results vary greatly.
Does this apply to other meats like beef and pork?
Yes, weighing raw provides the most standardized baseline for other meats as well due to moisture loss during cooking.
The Takeaway
-
Weighing chicken raw provides the most accurate and consistent baseline for nutrition tracking, recipes, and portion control.
-
Moisture loss and fat rendering during cooking mean raw chicken weighs significantly more than cooked.
-
While less reliable, cooked weights can be used judiciously for approximations in some cases.
-
Cooking method, cut, bone-in vs boneless, and other factors influence the degree of weight loss.
-
For everyday cooking, strive to weigh chicken raw when possible for precision, adjusting as needed based on your specific needs and diet.
So the next time your recipe calls for “X lbs chicken”, be sure to weigh it raw for the truest measurement. With the proper techniques and awareness of the impacts of cooking, you can determine the ideal way to weigh chicken for your cooking needs.
WEIGHING RAW VS COOKED
When I first started tracking and would hear people recommend weighing things raw… It just made zero sense to me. (Kind of like when recipes say add salt and pepper “to taste” to your meatballs or something…. As if I can taste the raw meat to know if I’ve got the right amount in there. Although I can’t promise I won’t do the same thing. Ha.)
Anyway, same idea. At first I thought it was totally unrealistic. People don’t serve raw meat. What if I’m at a friend’s house? I’m not always making a recipe fresh. What if I’m using leftover grilled chicken or taco meat? And I’m certainly not always cooking just my own portion where I can weigh it before and plan it all out. And what if I change my mind and want more or less!? So much commitment. It all sounded totally unrealistic and unsustainable.
Fast forward a year. I’ll be honest. It’s still not totally second nature, and my logging isn’t always perfect. But for the most part I’ve got it down if I want to be precise and I’ve got shortcuts if I want to estimate. So here’s what I’ve learned:
When you buy a product, the nutrition information listed pertain to that product in THAT state. So for instance, I buy the frozen chicken tenderloins from Costco which is 1 fat and 23 protein for a 4 oz (112 gram) portion. FROZEN that is. When I cook it, water will be lost and the meat will shrink and weigh somewhere around 30% less from my experience. But I’m still getting all the macros/nutrients/calories of the original weight, since all we lost was water. So I just need to make sure I log the higher amount. If I logged 90 grams of “Kirkland chicken tenderloins” because that’s what I put on my plate, I’d be under-logging. It could be slowing my progress and spending macros on something that’s not even worth the cheat!
SO – if I were cooking a quick meal for myself, I can weigh out and cook that 112 gram portion of raw chicken and call it good. Don’t need to weigh it after…. just log the full 112 grams of the chicken you scanned in. (I always use the barcode feature when I can!) It will shrink and weigh less now, but it doesn’t matter since you know you’re eating the whole portion.
How to Add A Recipe to My Fitness Pal
But it’s not always that simple because we’re not always just cooking for one. This is where the recipe feature in My Fitness Pal is super helpful, even if you aren’t adding other ingredients that you have to track. Here is how you add a recipe in MFP to get an accurate logging AND be able to change your portion on a whim!:
- Go to “more” in the bottom right of your screen
- Then “meals, recipes, and food”
- “Create a recipe” down at the bottom
- “Enter ingredients manually”
- Now title your food or recipe, for instance, “My grilled chicken tenderloins”
- Where it says servings… You’re gonna come back to that, so for now, put a 1 as a place holder. (Or, if you KNOW you’re gonna divide this meal into perfect 8ths etc, you can put that it makes 8 servings. This is not my preferred method, especially with casseroles or brownies etc.. since you might not cut each piece equally and that can make a way bigger difference than you think.)
- Now where you add your ingredients, you can list them there OR push the arrow that takes you to the next screen and you can add ingredients with the barcode. This is what I do for best accuracy.
- Scan in your chicken as your one ingredient. If you’re going to grill 800 grams of raw chicken… that is your ingredient. “800 g Kirkland chicken tenderloins”
- (Or add your whole list for other recipes! Check everything thoroughly. There are some major inaccurate foods in there. I once had cilantro ring in at like 400 calories)
- Marinate chicken in some easy, macro-less spices and vinegar etc. Or log anything significant as part of your recipe. If you do that you can weigh the marinade before and after and see what percentage was actually absorbed by the chicken. Or take your best guess and log a little olive oil etc. If it’s vinegar, lemon juice, spices… I don’t bother logging any of it. If it’s brown sugar or oil I would. You get it. But make it realistic for yourself so you don’t hate everyone at dinner time.
- Now grill your chicken
- When it’s all done, weigh the whole huge plate of cooked chicken making sure to zero out the scale with a dish on it before you put the chicken in the dish so you’re ONLY weighing the chicken.
- That new weight, let’s say it’s now 640 grams of chicken. THAT is what you put in the number of “servings”.
- Save your recipe
- Now go back to your diary and you can log for instance: 120 “servings” of “my grilled chicken tenderloins” from your recipes…. since you’ve assigned every gram to be a serving. This allows you to change your plans and have more or less and just weigh exactly what you have.
- If used for all your recipes, it also allows you to shave off a little bite of brownie and weigh and log that!*
- I don’t do this every time I grill chicken. Now I trust that the shrinkage is about the same and I just log my grilled chicken from the first recipe every time. It won’t matter if you cook more or less chicken (or even double a batch of cookies etc.. ) because the proportions should be the same. You WON’T be able to do that if you just split your first recipe in 8ths for instance and then ended up starting with more raw chicken the next time etc. Another reason I don’t prefer that method. I’m always grateful when I take the time to add the recipe this way.
* One more helpful tip– weigh all of your most commonly used pots and dishes RIGHT NOW and keep a note in your kitchen or in your phone. Now when you pull a pan of brownies out of the oven and go to weigh it, you’ll know the weight of the pan to subtract so you can get the weight of JUST the brownies. I even do this with Cinnamon rolls. You know there’s always one that’s twice as big as the others. If I can pretend not to know, I’ll for sure eat that one! Just me?