Recipe calorie calculator for homemade food
Calories per 100 g of a cooked dish = total calories of the raw ingredients ÷ cooked weight × 100. For example, a pilaf made from 2,196 kcal of ingredients weighs 1,600 g when cooked, which is 137 kcal per 100 g. Per-100 g numbers come from the label or USDA FoodData Central. Enter your ingredients and the cooked weight for per-100 g and per-portion numbers.
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Where the number comes from
The formula, a worked example and where it stops working
How to calculate calories in homemade food: the short answer
Calories per 100 g = calories of all raw ingredients / cooked weight × 100. A pilaf made from 2,196 kcal of ingredients weighs 1,600 g cooked: 2,196 / 1,600 × 100 = 137 kcal per 100 g. Take the per-100 g numbers from the label or from the US Department of Agriculture's USDA FoodData Central. Cooking water adds no calories, only weight.
How to use the calculator
You need kitchen scales and the packaging. The calculator updates the moment you change a number.
- Weigh every ingredient raw, before cooking, and enter the grams
- Copy calories, protein, fat and carbs per 100 g from the label (for unpackaged food, look it up in USDA FoodData Central)
- Do not forget the oil: it is the most common gap in the count
- Weigh the empty pot first, then again with the food, and enter the difference as the cooked weight
- Enter your portion weight to get its calories and macros
Example: chicken pilaf
The calculator starts with the pilaf from our article on how to calculate calories in homemade food: 300 g of dry rice, 500 g of chicken thigh, 200 g of carrots, 150 g of onion and 40 g of oil, cooked weight 1,600 g. The table comes from the same engine as the calculator and matches the worked example in the article.
Look at the oil: 40 g gives 354 kcal (884 kcal per 100 g in USDA data) out of 2,196, about a sixth of the whole dish.
| What | Kcal | P / F / C, g |
|---|---|---|
| Whole dish (raw ingredients) | 2,196 | — |
| 100 g cooked | 137 | 7.7 / 4.0 / 17.1 |
| 350 g portion | 480 | 27.0 / 13.8 / 59.8 |
Chicken pilaf from the homemade-food article, cooked weight 1600 g. Ingredient numbers from USDA FoodData Central.
Rice and pasta: dry or cooked weight
Count the way you weighed. If you weighed the grain dry, use the numbers for the dry product — that is usually what the packet shows. FoodData Central has two entries for white long-grain rice: dry is 365 kcal per 100 g, cooked is 130. Weigh it dry but use the cooked numbers and you come out almost three times too low.
Dry weight is more reliable: 100 g of dry rice is the same everywhere, while cooked rice depends on how much water each cook uses.
Soup, patties and dishes you cannot weigh
In soup, water is the heaviest ingredient but has zero calories. You can leave it out entirely: what matters is the weight of the finished soup. Patties and bakes lose water as they cook and get lighter, so weigh them cooked too.
If you have no way to weigh the finished dish, split it into equal portions and take that share of the «Whole dish» number: a quarter of the pot is a quarter of the calories. Rougher than scales, but better than not counting at all.
Logging the dish
Work it out once and use it all week: calories per 100 g stay the same until you change the recipe. After that you only weigh your portion.
If you do not know your daily calories yet, the calorie calculator and the macro calculator will tell you.
How we calculate
There are no study-based norms here, just arithmetic on the numbers for each ingredient.
- For each raw ingredient: grams × the value per 100 g ÷ 100. That gives its calories, protein, fat and carbs.
- Everything is added up and divided by the cooked weight, × 100 — those are the macros per 100 g. If you leave the cooked weight empty, the raw weights are used.
- A portion is the per-100 g numbers × portion weight ÷ 100.
- Ingredient numbers come from the pack or from USDA FoodData Central (US Department of Agriculture), where every entry lists macros per 100 g.
Do not feel like typing in every ingredient? Snap your plate — the CalCash bot counts calories from a photo and checks the numbers against the same USDA FoodData Central database.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate calories per 100 g of a recipe?
Add up the calories, protein, fat and carbs of all raw ingredients, divide by the cooked weight and multiply by 100. The calculator above does it for you: just enter the ingredients and the cooked weight.
How do I count calories in soup?
Enter every ingredient except the water — it has no calories. Then weigh the whole finished soup and enter that weight. The calculator divides the calories by it and shows what is in 100 g and in your bowl.
Should I count rice and pasta dry or cooked?
The way you weighed them. Weighed dry, use the dry numbers from the packet. Mixing them up is costly: for rice it is 365 versus 130 kcal per 100 g in USDA FoodData Central, almost three times apart.
Where do I get calories and macros per 100 g?
The label is easiest. For food without packaging there is the US Department of Agriculture's USDA FoodData Central, where every entry lists calories, protein, fat and carbs per 100 g.
What if I cannot weigh the finished dish?
Split it into equal portions and take that share of the whole dish. Four equal portions, for example, are a quarter of the «Whole dish» calories each.
Reminders
Water and weight