Absolute Beginner Home Cooking

Hi there. Started Carb counting yesterday so very new to this. Am signed up for a DAFNE course, but decided to start now as I felt I understood enough to be able to manage from what I had read already, and my consultant concurred.

Now I haven't seen the Dietician yet, and the nurse who went over the basics didn't have time to cover the basics of cookery, so I thought I would ask here.

I like to cook a large pot of stew, curry etc in a slow cooker, and freeze the remainder, and am going to practice by doing a curry to try it out. I need a little guidance on how to work out carbohydrates per serving.

Have worked out the weights of ingredients and carb amounts of each, and got a total I am confident of. The question is what is the best method of estimating carbs per portion. I could weigh the completed meal and then weigh the portion size and divide, but unsure if to weigh before or after cooking. Also some of the weight will be water, so should I estimate how much content is water and take that into account?

Haven't really looked for any good online resources for carb counting cooking, so if anyone knows a good one fo me to educate myself while waiting to get on DAFNE, I would be very grateful.

Hi, welcome to the forum.................

The total carb amount you worked out will remain the same for the complete contents of the slow cooker even after cooking........

Once it is cooked you should then divide it up into more or less equal portions for serving/storing, and then you simply divide your initial carb count by the number of portions.......

the cooking process does add water and weight and so essentially dilutes the carbs that are present, so 400g of uncooked pasta could have 100g of carbohydrate and could be split evenly between 4 people, so 25g each......

after cooking the weight of the pasta increases but now there is more mass and therefore more portions.........there is now 6 portions, so your initial carb count would be divided by 6 instead of 4, giving each portion a smaller carb content.......in my example 16.6g [100g/6 portions]

It can be confusing, especially with packet food, but ultimately the cooked carb content is only relevant if your not consuming the full meal........

Thanks for the information.

Wasn't sure how cooking effected carbs - have seen lists of food that gave different amounts for cooked and raw (probably calculated to include the cooking oil etc now I think about it).

If it remains the same its easier than I thought. Trying to work it out by weight was the wrong idea I guess.

I'll bear it in mind what you said about things like pasta or rice that absorb water when weighing out portions.