Where do all of these carbs in this recipe come from?

February 10, 2020 11:38 AM

Recipe that serves four, shows 510 grams of carbs in nutritional information. Ingredients follow; INGREDIENTS 10 garlic cloves, chopped - 4 serrano chiles, with seeds, sliced - 3½” piece ginger, finely grated - 1 cup olive oil - ½ cup reduced-sodium soy sauce - ¼ cup apple cider vinegar - ¼ cup sugar - 3 tablespoons fish sauce - 1 tablespoon kosher salt - 2 lemons, sliced - 6 sprigs thyme - 8 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs (about 3½ lb.) All of the ingredients except the chicken are used to marinate the chicken for twelve hours. The marinade is discarded. - What is the source of the carbohydrates?
posted by leafwoman to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

My guess is that it's a typo and is supposed to be 51 grams, and that the nutrition facts were calculated from all the ingredients, disregarding the fact that part of the marinade is discarded. 1/4 C sugar is 50g carbs.
posted by mosst at 11:41 AM on February 10, 2020 [22 favorites]

Best answer: This identical (or very similar) recipe reports 22 grams of carbs.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:28 PM on February 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

What is the source of the carbohydrates

A typo. I think it's 5.1 carbs per serving.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:34 PM on February 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Agreed that they do not come from anywhere, they are bad numbers.

There is no great source out there for recipe nutritional information, and even the tolerable ones tend to use user-submitted data which is utter bullshit because people are fallible and/or assholes. Even published cookbooks don't get fact-checked terribly well on these numbers, it seems, but anything you find on the internet should especially be regarded as extremely questionable and in no way authoritative. Do the math yourself if you see anything suspicious.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:42 PM on February 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

Tellingly, 510 g of anything is over a pound, and, ignoring the chicken, the entire recipe doesn't weigh that much--especially since, as you say, you're discarding the vast majority of the non-chicken.
posted by teremala at 1:49 PM on February 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

510 is obviously a typo.

5.1 per serving sounds plausible, if on the low side.
posted by fingersandtoes at 3:12 PM on February 10, 2020

I used an app for diabetics and it reports 84g carbs total for the entire recipe you suggested. The sugar (50g carbs), garlic, and soy sauce are your main source of carbs.
posted by WedgedPiano at 8:04 PM on February 10, 2020 [3 favorites]