Fat absorbed by vegetables when cooked with meat
 

One of my favorite simple dishes to make is to season a whole chicken, put it in a roasting pan, add root vegetables (some combination of potato, sweet potato, rutabaga, parsnip, carrot, and/or onion) and then roast it covered for 90 minutes.

My wife suggested yesterday that the vegetables should be roasted separately because they soak up "a lot" of fat from the chicken when roasted in the same pan. I don't make gravy or pour any extra "juice" over the vegetables, but they always have a thin coating of drippings - a coating that gives them a great flavor I'd hate to part with (unless I found out it was really fatty).

Is there a good rule of thumb for estimating how much fat the vegetables take in when roasted with the meat?

Hmmm--that is a very good question. In past weight loss attempts I probably would have agonized over this (I was keeping total fat under 10 grams :eek:). Now, I don't think I'd really worry about it all that much.

Perhaps add a "pat" of butter or small amount of olive oil to your food log if you want to account for the traces of fat that the veggies absorb. I'd assume you're logging the poultry using the correct cooking method so that will add some fat to your log anyway.

This is my two cents.

Regards,
Michael

My 2 cents with is the same as Michael's...that makes 4 cents. :)

I love doing roast chicken the same way, and I believe if you put the vegetables "cooked or roasted" they account for fat. You probably wouldn't have to add all of them this way, because I find when you add a vegetable "cooked", fitday adds a LOT of fat. I still lost that week so it must have worked!