Used a couple of US recipes recently and most of the ingredients are in cups, or spoons, not by weight. This is a nightmare to convert. Do Americans not own scales or something? What’s the reason for measuring everything by volume?
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Volumetric measurements, like the imperial system, is largely in place due to tradition.
But no, most people do not own good food scales. They aren’t pricey (I think mine was $25), but they are very uncommon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in a store.
I think you’re.right about tradition. I have a set of recipes from 3 generations ago. It’s been converted over the generations from a list of ingredients to “a fistful of flour” to “a juice glass of broth” to “1/3 cup of butter” as it was passed to me. Maybe my contribution will be to convert it to weight and pass it to my kids for them to finally convert it to metric weights.
I’m amazed they are that uncommon. Here (UK) you can walk into a supermarket and pick them up for less than £20.
“uncommon” is an overstatement, you can get them pretty much anywhere that has pots and pans. It’s uncommon in that most people don’t bother owning one, not that they’re hard to get
As an American who has recently learned to love his scale, I’m with you 100%. With that being said, no, many Americans do not have kitchen scales.
Just another one of those things where the rest of world looks at the US and shakes its head. There seems to be a lot of things in the US purely in place based on tradition and logic goes out the window.
Why should I take an extra step to weigh everything out? Why should I give up some valuable counter space for a food scale? That’s just extra work for no reason.
Precision. Volume varies by how tightly something is packed, how finely something is diced, etc. I’ve seen recipes that recommend spooning flour into the measuring cup to ensure it’s not packed in tightly, so you don’t use too much. How much simpler is it to just weigh it?
Unless you’re a professional chef it does not matter if you use 65 grams or 70 grams of something in a recipe. Makes zero difference.
I’m happy that you don’t need it, but some of us like better precision. Plus, it’s convenient to put a mixing bowl on a scale and add things by weight, rather than using numerous measuring cups.
You add thing using cups, dude
F-e-w-e-r D-i-s-h-e-s
But also, there’s no real incentive to change… my brownies taste just fine with a 1/3 cup of oil and a 1/3 cup of water. I am sure they would taste just as good with 80 g of each, but if it works, why change it?
What logic is there in saying grams are better than cups of both work well for the intended task? If I were a professional baker, it’s entirely possible I would have a different opinion, but I (like 99% of Americans) am not.
The difference is accuracy.
But what I’m saying is I’m plenty accurate enough with cups… there would be no appreciable difference for my box of brownies.
You’re maybe plenty accurate for the brownies of your preference, but probably not for professional cooking or other activities that require accuracy.
The vast majority of the planet are not professional cooks.
Not the point.
Oil and water are fine, but flour already starts to be a problem. How densely is it packed?
Then we go on to salt, which can have a lot of different grain sizes (although that is annoying with a scale as well because most kitchen scales are not very accurate with single-digit-grams)
Then it gets really weird when they say to use a cup of grated cheese, because depending on how you grate it it has very different densities
Adam ragusea has some good video explaining both why we use volume and why we don’t use metric
https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY?si=ZJ7sKhOdiHxozSUO
Another video that explains stuff on the imperial system that fits.
To anyone who tries watching the first one, just skip ahead to 6:50 where he actually starts explaining his reasoning. I can summarizer them here
- “Volume is visible”
- “You gotta scoop your stuff out with something, so it might as well be by something that measures volume”
The third one was too dumb for me to follow. Something about if you measure stuff by weight, you end up with large portions.
The fourth one was just absurd. No one measures spices by weight… So not being able to measure 1.2g of cinnamon or what not, just isn’t a thing.
Alright. I’ll stop there. The arguments presented go from fairly bad, to dumb, to made up stuff no one does. The arguments against them are so easy to express:
- “Amounts” of cooking ingredients is mass, so if you want to measure that, you… might as well just measure that, ie weight.
- Amounts that make sense to measure by weight, you measure by weight.
- Spices, and stuff that makes sense to measure by volume, you measure by teaspoon, pinches, or what not. Rarely is the accuracy there all that important, tbh.
I always try to search either for metric recipes or “tech cards”, cus trying to follow imperial recipes is a frigen nightmare. My cup is 300 milliliters, hell if I know what volume cups they use.
This is what they use. Still a horrible way to measure things.
😭😭😭
Even as a Canadian and raised on the metric system, I prefer recipes in cups and spoons.
As a Canadian you would have been raised on a hybrid… Food and/or construction stuff has always stayed in imperial measures here
I’m from the UK but we have a set of cups for old recipes (and American recipes)… Honestly it’s easier in a lot of cases to measure stuff out, I like it. What’s really annoying is that US and UK cups are DIFFERENT SIZES.
Yes! Ounces and fluid ounces, pints, quarts… Ughhh
God gave us ten fingers for a reason, USE METRIC, PEOPLE
I kinda feel like in the grand scheme, it doesn’t really matter. Sure we could measure by weight, but outside of a few ingredients prone to density variation it gets us by, and really there’s just no impetus to change. 🤷
Because it’s a few dozen times faster? You can literally reach into a container and take out one cup and that’s it. Works for me ost liquids or grainy stuff. Not from US btw.
As an American who was taught to use cups and had recipe books that used cups, I dunno but it’s dumb. A cup of peanut butter?! Like no fucking way I’m scooping that shit into a cup then into whatever I’m making. But I did measure just like that before I knew better. I have a food scale and convert cups to a weight and I will never turn back.
How do you convert cups to weight accurately when a cup of one thing might weigh more than a cup of a different thing?
Thankfully the density of most foods is known
Is there a separate conversion chart for every food out there? Seems confusing.
I just yell “okay Google how much does a cup of peanut butter weigh” if Google doesn’t get me a good answer usually my husband will run in yelling the conversions he googled so I will stop yelling at the spy-assistant bot. I have encountered few ingredients that I couldn’t find a weight conversion for.
Why a chart? Just throw the stuff you wanna know in wolfram alpha, it’ll figure out the units for you
Saves you from having to weigh the stuff. U fill the cup and dump.
Doing by weight means u have to take the extra step of weighing it after it’s in a container. What a massive waste of time for no advantage.
Doing by weight means u have to take the extra step of weighing it after it’s in a container.
Lol no, just weigh it as you pull it from your container. Hell, skip another step and just put your mixing bowl on the scale and zero it out. Weight measurement is so much simpler and accurate than volumetric measurements.
You could put the jar of peanut butter on the scale and measure what amount you’re taking out?
Or you place your bowl etc. on the scale and tare after each addition. Doesn’t work in all situations (e.g. pan on the stove) but is great for baking.
I measure boobs in cups because I’m a savage.
Vandal Savage?
I think it goes back to Fannie Farmer in 1896, who wrote the first major and comprehensive cookbook in English that used any kind of standard measurements. European cookbooks mostly used vague instructions without any standardized weights or numbers before that. At this point in the industrialized world standardized cup measures were relatively cheap and available. Scales were relatively bulky, expensive, and inaccurate in 1896. So the whole tradition got started, and most of the major cookbooks owed something to Fannie Farmer. Cookbooks that used standardized weights probably got started in other countries much later, when scales were becoming commonplace.
Because measuring by weight is simply a waste of time. Full cup have exact measure dump. Simple.
Why would you ever add an extra step or two for no reason??
Because measuring by weight is simply a waste of time. Full cup have exact measure dump. Simple.
Possibly the most confidently wrong comment I have read here
I’m amused that my logic is the same but opposite of yours: why the fuck should I scoop and level something to get an “exact measurement”, when I could just dump into a container on a scale and get an actual exact measurement.
Assuming you’re not trolling, flour has variable density depending on how you scoop or squish it. Packed or unpacked brown sugar?
So you don’t have to modify the amount when the recipe called for kosher salt but you only have sea salt. A cup of pasta? Depending on the type you end up with vastly different weight
It really depends what sort of recipes you’re making, but for cooking very loose approximations are often fine.
I often have to convert to weight/mass in order to find out how much of an ingredient to buy. I have no idea how many cups an eggplant is. But once I get it home the recipe might as well say “however much eggplant you have.”
If I’m truly off, I will typically scale up the recipe adjusting for the extra meat or vegetable content. I’ll more or less assume that 1lb of meat is interchangeable with 1lb of veggies. That’s not quite true, in particular with salt.
Your mileage may vary though. Some recipes and ingredients are much more sensitive to deviations.
If it calls for 200g of aubergine, then you can weigh that at the shop… It’s more convenient at that end, and you can get the right amount.
I’m going to estimate 99% of recipes in the US don’t give weights for those. It will say one large onion or 3 medium zucchini. There are a few places (serious eats) that tend to give weights but it’s extremely rare. If you’re lucky you’ll get volumes but weights are so rare.
Most baking doesn’t require the precision of weighing. They are rough proportions, not an exact science.
An experienced baker, or really any kind of chef, will learn over time to make minor adjustments based on a lot of stuff. Maybe a bit less sugar, to taste. Maybe a difference in the brand or exact type of ingredient compared to what you’re used to. Maybe it’s a particularly dry day and you need to add more moisture to the dough.
If it’s something I have a lot of experience with I don’t even bother with measuring at all, just eyeball it.
I do this, and my brother who is an amateur chef thinks it’s witchcraft. Baking is not hard to eyeball or make by feel people.
I’m a trained chef working the trade for 30 years. 2 years in vocational school, a year for cooking and a year for bakery/patisserie. I’m a really confident cook - the concept of different cuisines, the basic ingredients and seasonings, no probs. Baking is still a rocket science for me. My current head chef said baking is fun if you know what you are doing but I’m still after 30 years not fully confident about the consistency.
My advice to anyone is start with pancakes. Make a few different recipes and pay attention to the differences. Then make them without a recipe. Switch up ingredients, sub in whatever you feel like, play with ratios. Once you have a handle on that, move to sourdough, cookies, or piecrust. Then do muffins. Leave cakes for last, because they are the most finicky. You’ll be baking with confidence and without a recipe in no time.
I’ve heard that several times from different people… That chefs often don’t like baking. Or are at least sceptical about their abilities (or the process.)
I think it comes down to the fact that cooking is active. You constantly season, add heat, remove heat, and check if it’s done. Baking is more passive, you mix things and hope for the best, you can’t just add more sugar or flour at the 10 minute mark.
I do this, and my brother who is an amateur chef thinks it’s witchcraft. Baking is not hard to eyeball or make by feel people.
I can do this no problem however my WIFE cannot. If something doesn’t have a recipe defined down to a gnats ass then she looses confidence and nearly always screws it up. She’s not dumb she just doesn’t have the knack. It’s sorta like a “green thumb”, some people will kill a plant just looking at it while others are seemingly able to grow palm trees in the Arctic.
I’m sure it’s trainable but some people just have the ability and others don’t. Different people / different gifts and all that.
As someone who once subbed cayenne 1:1 for black pepper in spaghetti sauce, and who has learned to make my own breadcrumbs from failed sourdough, I promise it’s a learned skill. It just takes letting yourself fail a lot and not taking yourself too seriously.
