25 Yield Percents
When you buy fresh fruit and vegetable produce and prepare it, there is almost always some waste, or trim. Some produce has very little trim, and some has a lot. Produce in general has yield percentages, which can give you a good idea of how much of what you buy is going to be usable. For this lesson, we will use a chart which gives the yield percentages of a number of kinds of produce. We can then talk about how much usable food we will have after preparing what we’ve bought.
Let’s take zucchini, for example. If you look at the chart below, the yield percentage of zucchini is 95%. So, if you buy 3 pounds of zucchini, the usable portion after you prepare them would be 95% of 3 pounds. Remember the formula we’ve used in the past: We call the part the edible portion quantity, or EPQ, and the whole the as-purchased quantity, or APQ.
The APQ would be 3 pounds. So:
95 3 = EPQ 100
The usable part would be 2.85 pounds.
Another example: If you buy a carton of strawberries that weighs 5000 grams, what would the usable portion be after you prepared them? The yield percentage for strawberries from the chart below is 87%. What is 87% of 5000 grams? The usable part would be 4350 grams.
We can also do a problem like this: If a recipe calls for 32 ounces of sliced pears, how many ounces would you need to buy? The yield percentage for pears is 78%. We would ask, 32 ounces is 78% of what? Our formula would look like this:
The whole would be 41.03 ounces, which would be approximately what we’d want to buy for the recipe.
| Item | Yield % |
|---|---|
| Anise | 75 |
| Apples | 76 |
| Apricots | 94 |
| Artichokes | 48 |
| Asparagus | 56 |
| Avocado | 75 |
| Bananas | 68 |
| Beans, green/wax | 88 |
| Beans, Lima in shell | 40 |
| Beets, no tops | 76 |
| Beets, with tops | 49 |
| Beet greens | 56 |
| Blackberries | 92 |
| Blueberries | 92 |
| Broccoli | 61 |
| Brussels sprouts | 74 |
| Cabbage, green | 79 |
| Cantaloupe, no rind | 50 |
| Carrots, no tops | 82 |
| Carrots, with tops | 60 |
| Cauliflower | 45 |
| Celery | 75 |
| Celery root (Celeriac) | 75 |
| Chard | 77 |
| Coconut | 53 |
| Collards | 77 |
| Cucumbers | 95 |
| Eggplant | 81 |
| Endive, Chicory, Escarole | 74 |
| Figs | 82 |
| Fruit for juice: | |
| ___Grapefruit | *45 |
| ___Lemon | *45 |
| ___Lime | *35 |
| ___Oranges, Florida | *50 |
*: % of total weight
| Garlic bulb (10-12 cloves) | 87 |
| Grapefruit sections | 47 |
| Grapes, seedless | 94 |
| Kale | 74 |
| Kohlrabi | 55 |
| Leeks | 52 |
| Lettuce, Iceberg | 74 |
| Lettuce, leaf | 67 |
| Melons: | |
| ___Cantaloupe | 50 |
| ___Casaba | 50 |
| ___Cranshaw | 50 |
| ___Honeydew, no rind | 60 |
| ___Watermelon, flesh | 46 |
| Mushrooms | 97 |
| Mustard greens | 68 |
| Nectarines | 86 |
| Okra | 78 |
| Onions, green (10-12) | 60 |
| Onions, large | 89 |
| Orange sections | 70 |
| Parsley | 76 |
| Parsnips | 85 |
| Peaches | 76 |
| Pears | 78 |
| Peas, green in the shell | 38 |
| Peppers, green | 82 |
| Persimmons | 82 |
| Pineapple | 52