How much grocery to buy? Video
Products change their volume and weight during processing and cooking, and this fact often becomes an unpleasant surprise for novice housewives. A huge pot of porridge or a chop that has shrunk to doll size are consequences of incorrect calculation, which can be completely avoided.
How to calculate the right amount of food?
In culinary colleges and institutes, students are forced to study huge tables that describe all kinds of metamorphoses that occur with food in the course of their transformation into food. Waste losses during cleaning and processing, frying and crumbling, boiling of cereals and pasta – all this has long been researched and summarized in textbooks. Housewives do not have to memorize all these terrible words and numbers, but certain knowledge is still needed, otherwise they will not become the queen of the kitchen.
– rice is boiled for 20-30 minutes, while it increases in volume by 5-6 times; – buckwheat is cooked from 10 to 20 minutes with a 4-fold increase in volume; – oatmeal is boiled 30 times in 40-3 minutes; – millet is cooked for about 50 minutes, the volume increases 6 times; – pasta needs to be cooked for 7-15 minutes, from 100 grams of dry pasta you get 250 grams of side dish.
Unfortunately, food not only increases in volume and weight, but also decreases. This happens both in the preparatory stage and during preparation. Peeling, for example, loses up to 40% of the weight of a potato, depending on the season. The same thing happens with the rest of the vegetables. The weight of meat and fish, of course, also decreases. When cutting a whole fish into fillets, be prepared for the fact that it will become 30-40% lighter. The losses do not end there, since heat treatment also entails a decrease in the weight of the finished product. When frying or boiling, meat loses up to 40% of its weight, fish – about 20%, vegetables – from 5 to 50%, as for semi-finished meat products, for example, cutlets, during frying they become 20% lighter.
Calculation of products per person
Just knowing the propensity of foods to metamorphosis is not enough for proper menu planning. Whether you are looking for a 40-person banquet, a family dinner for two, or a weekly menu, you need some basic knowledge. The daily calorie intake for an adult man is about 3000 kcal, for a woman – 2500 kcal. Based on this, it is possible to count the amount of products per meal, which will allow you to correctly form a balanced menu for several days in advance and, accordingly, purchase products for future use. When choosing recipes and ingredients, not only calories are important, but also the chemical composition of the dishes, taking into account the body’s needs for minerals, vitamins, fats and carbohydrates. After all, a kilogram of fried meat contains about 4000 calories, but if you eat only fried meat, problems with the body will not keep you waiting.
If you are faced with the task of making a layout for a festive dinner, then here are approximate recommendations, based on the calculation of 1 kg of food per serving:
– salads – 100 g; – snacks, hot and cold – 200 g; – main courses 250 g + side dishes – 150 g; – desserts – 200 g; – bread – 100 g.
For comparison: the weight of a whole complex lunch, as a rule, does not exceed 500-600 g, given that about half is taken by the first course
If you are going to cook according to recipes from cookbooks or the Internet, be sure to check the number of servings at the exit so as not to accidentally cook 10 liters of borscht for two. When planning a homemade menu, do not forget about the shelf life of products, since you cannot, for example, keep greens fresh for a week or buy eggs a month in advance. However, many foods can be stored for long periods of time, saving you time when shopping. The correct calculation of the amount of food is very important for both health and the family budget, so do not neglect it.