Food & cooking · Meal prep shopping
Meal prep grocery quantity calculator.
Enter servings and cooked grams per serving for up to four items. Get the raw meat and dry grain or bean weight to buy, with cooking loss built in.
Inputs
Shopping quantities
Enter your numbers.
How much chicken and rice do I buy for 4 meal prep lunches?
Work backwards from the cooked servings. Each meat is divided by its USDA cooking yield to get the raw weight, and each grain or bean is divided by its cooked-to-dry ratio from USDA FoodData Central to get the dry weight. The extra trim box adds loss on top of cooking loss for meat you will trim or debone yourself.
Worked example. 4 servings of 150 g cooked roasted chicken breast need 600 g cooked, which is 833 g raw at a 72% yield. With 10% trim loss you would buy about 926 g. The same 4 servings of 150 g cooked long-grain white rice need about 214 g dry. Add 4 servings of 100 g cooked lentils and you need about 132 g dry.
Frequently asked questions
How much raw chicken do I need for 4 servings of 150 g cooked?
About 833 g (1.84 lb) of raw roasted chicken breast, meat and skin, at the USDA 72% yield, or about 926 g with 10% trim loss.
How much dry rice do I need for 4 servings of 150 g cooked?
About 214 g of dry long-grain white rice, using the USDA estimate of 2.8 g cooked per gram dry.
Is this a weekly meal plan?
No. It only converts the servings you enter into raw and dry weights to buy. Use the meal prep portion calculator to split a finished batch into containers.
Does it count bones?
Only through the extra loss box. The USDA chicken rows are for meat and skin without bone, so add your bone percentage there for a bone-in pack.
Can I add vegetables or sauces?
No. This tool covers meat, grains and dried beans, the foods whose weight changes the most when cooked.
Sources
Retrieved
- USDA Agricultural Research Service: Table of Cooking Yields for Meat and Poultry, Release 2 (2014)
- USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy (April 2018 CSV download): water content of the dry and cooked entries
Method: raw meat = cooked grams / (USDA yield / 100) / (1 minus extra loss); dry grain or beans = cooked grams / cooked-to-dry ratio from FDC water contents. Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent or stored.
Scope
A shopping estimate based on published averages. Always cook meat and poultry to the safe internal temperature on a food thermometer, whatever the weight says. General cooking information, not medical or dietetic advice.