Knowing exactly how many calories are in a homemade dish used to mean laboriously looking up every ingredient, multiplying by portion sizes and adding up the columns on paper. This recipe calorie calculator does all of that instantly in your browser: add as many ingredients as the dish needs, set the number of portions, and the tool returns the total calories, protein, carbohydrate and fat — both for the whole batch and broken down per serving.
How it works
The calculation is straightforward and identical to the method used on food labels. For each ingredient:
kcal contributed = (kcal per 100 g) / 100 x weight in grams
Protein, carbohydrate and fat are scaled by the same factor. The tool sums every ingredient to give a recipe total, then divides by the number of servings. A coloured bar shows how the calories split between macronutrients — protein and carbohydrate each contribute 4 kcal per gram, fat contributes 9 kcal per gram — which lets you see at a glance whether a recipe is predominantly carb-driven, fat-driven or balanced.
You can also use the built-in ingredient library: type any common food name into the search box and the tool fills the kcal-per-100-g, protein, carbs and fat fields automatically, so you only need to add the quantity in grams. The library covers 25 staples including chicken breast, salmon, rice, pasta, eggs, dairy, common vegetables and cooking fats.
Worked example
A simple chicken and rice bowl for four servings:
| Ingredient | Weight | kcal/100 g | kcal contributed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast (cooked) | 400 g | 165 | 660 |
| White rice (cooked) | 600 g | 130 | 780 |
| Olive oil | 20 g | 884 | 177 |
| Broccoli (raw) | 200 g | 34 | 68 |
| Total | 1220 g | 1685 kcal |
Divide by 4 servings: 421 kcal per portion, with roughly 42 g protein, 49 g carbs and 8 g fat each.
Swapping the white rice for brown rice (123 kcal/100 g instead of 130) would save about 42 kcal on the whole batch — a difference of 10 kcal per serving. This shows how small ingredient swaps compound over many meals.
Formula note
The primary calorie figure uses the kcal-per-100-g value you enter directly (from a food label or database). The macro breakdown bar independently cross-checks energy using the Atwater general factors: 4 kcal/g protein, 4 kcal/g carbohydrate, 9 kcal/g fat. Minor discrepancies between these two figures are normal because real foods contain fibre, alcohol and other components that shift the label value slightly from the Atwater sum. Both methods are scientifically valid; food labels are typically the more accurate source for any specific product.