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These four recipe conversion tools will help you turn any recipe into a healthy meal for any number of people…
Have you found a recipe you’d love to try but you need a tool to help you:
- Convert the ingredients and cooking temperature
- Choose healthier ingredients
- Substitute ingredients you don’t have or choose healthier options
- Scale the recipe up or down, to feed a different number of people or make freezer meals
Here are four free tools that will help you with easy recipe conversion to cook healthy meals at home. From cooking times to calories, click through to access the tools that will make living a healthy life easier.
A cooking conversion chart
Need to convert ingredient units for your recipe? Just put the ingredient amount into this tool from Culinary Schools and choose which conversion you want. The result pops up immediately under ‘Your Result’.
For example, putting in 1 cup and converting it to ounces gives you 8 fluid ounces:
With this free and easy ingredient conversion tool, you can convert between:
- Teaspoons
- Tablespoons
- Cups
- Teacups
- Shots
- Glasses
- Wine glasses
- Millilitres (ml)
- Fluid ounces (oz)
- Gallons (gal)
- Litres (l)
- Pounds (lb)
- Kilograms (kg)
- Calories
- Kilojoules (kj)
Not only that, but they also have a handy cooking conversion chart that gives you cooking temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius.
Get nutritional information for healthier recipe conversion
The key to making recipes healthier is using healthy ingredients. The more nutrients (and different nutrients) are in your food, the healthier it will be. Foods like pineapple are high in antioxidants, which fight free radicals and protect you from illness.
But how do you know which ingredients are healthy and have a high nutritional value?
You check the nutritional value in this food database from the US Department of Agriculture to see how many vitamins and minerals it contains.
The best part is that this database gives the full nutritional value of thousands of brands, foods, drinks, and alcoholic beverages, so you can choose what to cook and which recipe conversions you need to make.
You can also choose different serving sizes to get the nutritional values for how much you plan to eat or drink.
A great list of ingredient substitutions
We don’t always have all the ingredients at home to make a recipe, and sometimes we want to substitute an ingredient for a healthier option or for an ingredient that fits into our healthy eating plan.
That’s when this list of basic ingredient substitutions from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln comes in handy.
Just look up the ingredient listed in your recipe and see what healthy ingredient you can substitute for it and how much to use.
A recipe conversion calculator for the number of people
If you want to scale a recipe to feed more or fewer people, you can use this recipe conversion calculator.
This is a quick and useful recipe conversion tool that converts any recipe for any number of people.
Say you want to make a family-size recipe into dinner for two or you want to cook in bulk and freeze meals for the week, then this tool will convert the ingredient amounts for you so you know exactly what you need.
FAQs about recipe conversion
What is the formula to convert a recipe?
The simple recipe conversion formula is New Yield / Old Yield = Conversion Factor.
For example, the original recipe yields 5 portions to feed 5 people (old yield). You want to feed 20 people (new yield). So it’s 20/5=4 (conversion factor). Now multiply each ingredient by 4 to get the converted recipe.
How do you convert serving sizes?
You can convert any recipe for serving size using the conversion factor (new yield/old yield=conversion factor). For example, you want to convert a recipe that feeds 10 people a 150 g portion to feed 20 people with a 100 g portion. Calculate the new yield: 20 portions x 100 g = 2000 g. Calculate the old yield: 10 portions x 150 g = 1500 g. Calculate conversion factor: 2000 g / 1500 g = 1.3. Multiply each ingredient by 1.3 to get 20 portions of 100 g.
How much does a recipe yield?
The yield is how much cooked food you will have after making a recipe. This yield tells you how many portions you will have or how many people it will feed. For example, a cookie recipe may give you a yield of 24 baked cookies. You can convert a recipe’s yield with the recipe conversion formula.
Do you double the time if you double the recipe?
When doubling or tripling the ingredients in a recipe to scale it up, the cooking time will be longer but won’t usually double or triple with the ingredients. Cook the food for the original cooking time and then monitor it closely until the food is cooked.
Conclusion
Cooking healthy food at home is an important part of living a healthy lifestyle. The great news is that there’s a lot you can do with tools online, for example:
Take any recipe you want to try and convert it with a cooking conversion chart. Check the nutritional value of anything you eat and drink, substitute ingredients for healthier ones you have at home, and scale recipes to feed any number of people.
If you want to take your healthy living to the next level, find out if you should be drinking coffee and how to walk for weight loss.
