Raw to cooked
weight calculator.

Cooking yield: how much weight each food gains or loses

The factor is the number you multiply a raw weight by to get the cooked weight. Above 1 the food takes on water; below 1 it loses it. Divide instead of multiplying to go the other way, from a cooked weight back to raw.

Two directions, one rule. Heat drives water out of meat, so it shrinks. Boiling drives water into rice, pasta and pulses, so they swell. That is why the same 100 g on the scale means completely different things depending on which food it is and when you weighed it.

The mistake this table prevents

Database entries are usually labelled raw or dry, and people weigh cooked. Logging 200 g of cooked rice against a dry-rice entry roughly triples the real figure, because 200 g cooked came from about 70 g dry. The same error on chicken runs the other way and understates it: 200 g of cooked breast came from about 275 g raw, so a raw-labelled entry at 200 g misses a little under 30% of it.

Rice and chicken are the two foods where this goes wrong most often, and they go wrong in opposite directions, which is why the totals can look plausible while both entries are wrong.

Weigh the same edible batch twice

Enter the food's edible raw weight and its edible cooked weight. Exclude the pan, bones, packaging, and anything you did not include in the first measurement. Then enter the cooked portion on your plate.

Example

A 500g raw batch that weighs 375g after cooking has a 75% cooking yield. A 150g cooked portion is 40% of that batch and corresponds to 200g of the original raw weight.

Read the raw vs cooked food weight guide for the formulas, food-state rule, and common mistakes.

The raw equivalent is a weight basis

A 200g raw equivalent means that your cooked portion represents the same fraction of the measured batch as 200g did before cooking. You can apply that fraction to nutrition totals recorded for the original batch.

If you need to add ingredient calories and macros first, use the recipe macro calculator.

Which way the error goes if you get it wrong

Worth knowing before you decide how careful to be, because the two directions are not symmetrical.

Meat loses water and rendered fat, so it gets lighter. Applying a raw label to a cooked weight therefore undercounts: the 150g of cooked mince on your plate came from more than 150g raw. The gap is real but bounded, usually somewhere around a quarter of the weight.

Rice and pasta absorb water and get heavier, so the error runs the other way and is far larger. Cooked rice is roughly three times its dry weight, so logging 200g of cooked rice against a dry label counts close to three times the calories that were actually there. If you only fix one of these, fix this one.

Ground beef, since it is the case people ask about most

Mince is a common raw-to-cooked conversion, and it is also one of the least consistent, because two variables move at once.

The first is fat content. A fattier mix has more fat to render out, so it loses more weight than a leaner one. The second is whether you drain the pan. Draining removes rendered fat that would otherwise stay with the meat, which changes both the weight and the calories, and a raw label assumes none of it left.

Published yields for beef mince usually land in a broad range. That spread is the point: it is why this calculator asks you to weigh your own batch instead of offering one fixed multiplier. Weigh one batch of the mince you actually buy, cooked the way you actually cook it, and you have a number better than a generic table.

The simplest habit is to weigh raw

Nutrition labels on raw meat, dry rice and dry pasta describe the food as sold. Weighing at that point means the label applies directly and no conversion is needed at all.

Weigh cooked when raw is not available to you: a batch someone else cooked, leftovers, a meal prep container, or a restaurant portion. That is exactly what this calculator is for. What causes trouble is switching between the two without noticing, so pick one and let the log be consistent.

For a batch you cook repeatedly, weigh it once and reuse the result. The weighed repeat meal calculator is built for that, and the recipe macro calculator handles splitting a finished batch by cooked weight.

What usually goes wrong

• Weighing raw with the packaging or tray still on the scale.
• Including bones, skin or shell in one measurement and not the other. Both weights must describe the same edible batch.
• Weighing the pan contents with the oil you added. That oil has its own calories and was never part of the raw weight.
• Reusing a yield from one batch after changing the cut, the fat content, or the cooking method.
• Treating the raw equivalent as a nutrition figure. It is a weight, and you still apply the label to it.

If oil is the part you are unsure about, keep it separate with the cooking oil calorie calculator rather than folding it into the yield.

How to check the matching food database entry

Before logging the raw equivalent, check whether your tracker entry describes the same state as your food. "Beef, ground, raw" is not the same entry as "beef, ground, cooked, pan-browned." "Rice, dry" is not the same entry as "rice, cooked." If the state is wrong, the calculator can be mathematically correct and the log can still be wrong.

For packaged food, use the package label when you have it. For generic food, choose a food database entry with the same food state, fat level, preparation, and edible portion. If the entry looks suspicious, run it through the food database entry checker or compare the per-100g basis with the nutrition per 100g calculator.

No universal conversion fits every batch

Cooking time, temperature, cut, method, water, and fat change the yield. Use a measured batch when accuracy matters. USDA reference data can be useful for estimates, but each entry describes a specific food and preparation.