Recipe nutrition calculator
Type the ingredients, their weights and the number of servings, and get calories and macros for one portion and for the whole pot, with the ingredient that carries the calories.
Over 3 million foods from the BodyPal catalog and USDA. Use the arrow keys and Enter to pick one.
No ingredients yet. Search above, or load the example recipe.
1 means the whole dish is one serving. Enter how many portions you split it into and the result switches to one portion.
How we got your number
USDA FoodData CentralEach ingredient is its weight in grams × calories per 100 g ÷ 100, from USDA food composition data. Weights are raw weights, before cooking.
Where the calories come from
| Ingredient | Weight | Calories | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add an ingredient and the biggest calorie contributors appear here, largest first. | |||
Sorted by calories, so the line at the top is the one worth changing if you want the dish lighter.
Full macro breakdown
| Ingredient | Kcal | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protein, carbs and fat per ingredient show up here. | ||||
Protein and carbs carry about 4 calories a gram, fat about 9, so the macro percentages will not always add up to exactly 100 after rounding.
Weights, ounces and why there are no cups
Switch the toggle at the top to enter ounces instead of grams. One ounce is 28.35 g and one pound is 453.6 g, so a 1 lb pack of mince is 16 oz.
Cups, tablespoons and spoonfuls are volume, not weight. A cup of flour and a cup of sugar differ by around 80 g, so converting them for you would mean guessing a density and building an error into every line. Weigh solids on a kitchen scale. For liquids, 1 ml of water weighs 1 g, so 240 ml of water or milk is close enough to 240 g, and a tablespoon of oil is about 14 g.
Every ingredient value comes from USDA FoodData Central, the U.S. Department of Agriculture food composition database, and the macro split follows the Dietary Reference Intakes. Nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere. How we verify our data →
Recipe nutrition FAQs
How do I calculate calories in a homemade recipe?
Weigh each ingredient raw, look up its calories per 100 g, and add them all up. This page does the lookup from USDA data: a 500 g chicken thigh, 200 g rice and 20 g oil come to about 1,660 calories for the whole dish.
How do I work out calories per serving?
Divide the total by the number of servings, or better, weigh the finished dish and divide by the weight of one plate. A 1,660 calorie pot split into 4 servings is 415 calories each; if you serve yourself a third of it, that is 553.
Should I weigh ingredients raw or cooked?
Raw, before anything hits the pan. USDA values for meat, rice and pasta are per raw weight unless the entry says cooked, and water lost or gained in cooking changes the weight but not the calories.
Does cooking change the calories?
Only when something is added or lost: oil soaked up in frying adds about 40 calories per teaspoon absorbed, and fat that drips off grilled meat takes calories with it. Boiling, baking and steaming leave the total almost unchanged.
How accurate is this calculator?
As accurate as the weighing. USDA averages are within about 10 percent for whole foods; the bigger errors come from guessing weights, which is why grams beat cups. Weigh the oil and the cheese and the number is close.
Why grams and ounces, not cups?
A cup of flour weighs 120 g scooped and 150 g packed, a 25 percent difference in calories from one word. Weights remove that guesswork. The cups to grams converter on this site turns a recipe in cups into weights first.
