What's the Big Deal?
In modern home kitchens in Europe, a kitchen scale is standard
equipment. In the US, one rarely sees them except in the kitchens of
compulsive dieters and very serious amateur pastry chefs. Because most
people in Europe have scales, recipes generally specify quantities of
bulk dry ingredients as weights. For example, a cake recipe might
require 250 grams of flour. In the US, the same recipe would most
likely use cups, which measure volume, not weight.
So why the difference, and does it really matter? Is weighing
ingredients just a complicated, confusing, and unnecessary consequence
of going metric? The answer is that it does really matter, and once
you get the hang of it it's actually easier than using cup measures.
It matters because the amount of an ingredient that fits in a cup
varies a lot depending on how coarse the grain is and how tightly it
is packed into the cup measure. Weights, on the other hand, tell you
exactly how much of the ingredient you have, independent of how much
air space exists between the particles. The amount of flour in a cup
can vary as much as 25% depending on how it is packed. Sifting before
or after measuring can make the difference even greater. Needless to
say, this kind of disparity makes a tremendous difference in how a
recipe comes out. One morning pancakes are light and fluffy, the next
they are thin and rubbery.
Another advantage to weighing ingredients is that when you share
your recipe with others, they can more easily reproduce results
similar to your own. The number one complaint of home cooks is that
they followed a recipe, but it didn't turn out. The number one reason
this happens is that although they used the same number of cups of
each ingredient as the recipe author, they actually used a very
different amount.
For ingredients that require cutting or chopping, there is even
more ambiguity. Despite claims to the contrary, "one cup chopped
onions" isn't really a whole lot more informative than "one medium
onion, chopped." How finely are they chopped, and how tightly are
they packed into the cup? It makes a big difference. "200g of
chopped onion," is a much more reliable description.
Weights also help you shop for a recipe, especially if you are not
familiar with some of the ingredients. For example, if you don't
regularly cook with parsnips and a recipe calls for "three medium or
two large parsnips," what are you to do? You go to the market, and
you see parsnips for sale, all about the same size, but you have no
idea if they are small, medium, or large. If the recipe called for
20oz of parsnips, you could weigh them at the store, and buy just a
little extra to account for loss due to trimming.
Aside from being more accurate, weighing is usually easier
and less messy than scooping and leveling ingredients.
Breaking the Cycle
So if weighing ingredients is such a good idea, why don't we all do
it. The problem is a classic case of the chicken and egg. American
cookbooks, magazines, and web sites don't publish recipes by weight
because most of their audience don't have scales. Americans don't buy
scales because few recipes call for ingredients by weight.
Well, we here at eGullet have never been ones to let convention get
in the way of the quest for a good meal. So, with this manifesto, we
are drawing a line in the flour.
We highly recommend, indeed if this were a dictatorship we would
demand, that every member who doesn't already own a kitchen scale make
one their next kitchen equipment purchase.
This manifesto will introduce you to the various
through the process of shopping for, and
simple it is to update existing recipes
to use weights instead of volumes. No math is required,
except for the difference method, and then
it is only substitution.
Types of Scales
There are three basic types of kitchen scales on the market:
scales, and digital scales. Spring scales
are the least expensive but also the least accurate. Balance scales
were, for centuries, the most accurate available. Although they are
extremely accurate, they can be difficult to use. Digital scales are
the best of both worlds. They are extremely accurate, and simple to
use. In recent years, they have even become affordable.
Most kitchen scales have a maximum capacity of between two and
twenty pounds. The smaller the maximum capacity of the scale, the
more accurate it is likely to be in the range it covers. For most
home kitchens, something in the five to ten pound range is just fine.
If you cook very large quantities or certain items, or are dying to
know exactly how much that Thanksgiving turkey weighs, then you may
want a larger scale. But in that case, you probably want two, one for
every day use, and the big one for special occasions.
Spring Scales
Spring scales, as the name implies, use springs to measure
weights. The more weight that is placed on the scale, the more the
spring stretches. A needle attached to the spring moves as the spring
deforms, causing it to point to a number indicating how much the item
on the scale weighs.
Some spring scales allow the position of the indicator to be
adjusted. This is useful for resetting the scale to zero after
placing an empty bowl on it. This is called
product you put in the bowl, not the bowl itself. It also means that
you can measure one ingredient into the bowl, then tare the scale back
to zero and add a second ingredient without dumping the first out.
This is convenient because you can measure and mix in the same
bowl.
There are two types of spring scales you are likely to see. The
first is a stand-up type with a either a needle that moves up and down
or a large round dial on the front to indicate the weight. The second
is a low profile model where the dial is built into the base of the
scale. The low profile type is normally much easier to tare. To do
so, you just rotate the base. The stand-up type generally has a small
knob on the side or back of the scale for taring. This is much less
convenient than the low-profile type. Effectively, it means that you
always have to weigh in the same bowl, and dump each ingredient out
into a mixing bowl before weighing the next one.
Balance Scales
Balance scales determine the weight of an ingredient by comparing
it to known standard weights. There are two basic varieties of this
type of scale, and a third variety that combines the first two.
The first type is the straight balance. This is what you see
blind justice holding up. The item to be weighed goes on one side,
and one or more standard weights go on the other. If the two sides
are in balance, then the item being weighed weighs exactly the same as
the sum of the weights on the other side. A straight balance is very
accurate. Some laboratory models are good to a small fraction of a
gram. But it's not very practical for the kitchen.
The second type of balance scale is the sliding scale balance.
With this type, there is a single known weight, but you can slide it
from left to right along a scale until it balances. You have probably
seen one of these in your doctor's office. These aren't as absolutely
accurate as the straight balance, but they are easier to use and there
are no little weights to lose.
The third type of balance is the hybrid, as shown above. It allows
you to use individual weights like a straight balance, but also
provides a sliding scale.
Another drawback of balance scales is that that have the most
delicate mechanical parts of any of the three types of scales. The
main pivot on which the balance rests is particularly crucial. It
must be as close to absolutely frictionless as possible. Over time it
can wear down or become gummed up, causing the scale to loose
accuracy.
Balance scales can still be found, but unless you really like how
they look, you are probably better off with one of the other types.
Spring scales are less expensive and digital scales are as accurate,
if not more, and much easier to use.
Digital Scales
Digital scales are the newest form of kitchen scale. As with all
things digital, their prices continue to fall. Digital scales work by
passing a small electrical current through a material that is pressure
sensitive. A sensor determines the weight on the scale by the amount
of current that flows. This is converted to digital form and
displayed on a small screen.
Digital scales are extremely accurate. They are also very easy to
use. Taring is generally just a matter of touching a button. Most
digital scales are quite small, like low-profile spring scales. Some
of the newer models also have additional features, like timers, built
in. Others, aimed at dieters, contain databases of common food items
and can tell you not only the weight, but also the fat and calorie
content of food.
Historically, digital scales were quite expensive, ranging up to
$250. However, that is no longer the case. As of this writing,
entry-level models are selling for as low as $30. There are a number
of very good full-featured options in the $60-70 range. More
expensive models generally add more stainless steel, chrome and glass, but
they don't weigh foods any more accurately.
Shopping for a Scale
Now that you know the three types of scales, it's time to start
shopping for the specific model that will work best for you. For most
home kitchens, a digital scale is going to be
the best bet. Ten years ago, this might not have been the case due to
the high cost, but that is now much less of an issue. If you really
want to save money, you can get a mostly plastic low-profile
is not going to be incredibly accurate or built to last.
Three primary factors differentiate one digital scale from another,
and determine the price for which any given scale sells. These are
durability, appearance, and extra features. All digital scales are
more than accurate enough for kitchen use. Some are more precise, in
the sense that they measure in 1 or 2g increments instead of 5g
increments, but this only matters when measuring very small quantities
of ingredients. It is wrong to think that spending an extra $50 is
going to get you a substantially more accurate model.
The durability of a digital scale depends primarily on what
materials it is constructed from and what kind of buttons it has. The
most durable scale surfaces are made from stainless steel. They wipe
clean and wont react if you spill acidic materials on them. Some
scales have glass surfaces. These are also very easy to wipe clean,
and they are stain resistant. The only drawback is that if you use
your scale often you are likely to end up chipping the glass against a
backsplash, mixer, or other counter-top appliance. A few digital scales
are made of plastic, but this is generally reserved for low-profile
spring scales.
Another thing that affects the longevity of a digital scale is the
type of buttons it has. Every digital scale has at least one button,
for taring; some have many more for all kinds of advanced features.
Ideally, these buttons should be flat sealed buttons, like those found
on most microwaves. This way, food particles can't easily get into
the interior of the scale and interfere with the operation of the
electronics. Some models have individual buttons with gaps between
them and the shell of the scale. These are less desirable.
The appearance of a scale is largely a matter of personal taste.
Some people like the simple industrial look of a basic metal model
with a stainless steel tray. Others prefer the high-design Euro-style
models made of glass and brushed aluminum, chrome, or stainless steel.
At the extreme end, some of these scales look more like sculpture than
kitchen appliances. When it comes to appearance, everyone's tastes
are different. The best thing you can do is choose a model that you
will be happy to keep out on your counter-top, instead of buried in the
back of a cabinet. The more accessible your scale is, the more you
will use it.
Beyond just weighing things, some newer digital scales offer a
number of additional features. Some, for example, include clocks
and/or timers. This can be a convenience, or an unnecessary gadget.
Most of us already have clocks and timers on our ovens and/or
microwaves. You may also be the type who has no need for yet another
appliance to constantly blink 12:00 along with your VCR.
Another feature some scales offer is a calorie computer. You
select the type of food you are weighing from a menu, and then the
scale determines not only the weight of the food, but also the number
of calories. If you really think this is a must-have feature, try to
get one that lets you select by the name of the food being weighed, as
opposed to entering a code number in a guidebook.
Finally, there is at least one scale now for sale that includes a
thermometer. A temperature probe plugs into the scale and displays
temperatures on the scale's screen. This is possibly convenient for
making chocolate or candy. The down side is that you may not
necessarily use your thermometer directly adjacent to where you weigh
raw ingredients.
As you can probably tell, we aren't huge fans of lots of extras on
digital scales. A scale is already a wonderfully multi-tasking
device. What else other than a bowl can you use to help you make
almost any dish you would ever want to make? Pushing it further than
weighing things just puts all your eggs in one basket. It's like
buying a TV/VCR combo. If one part malfunctions, you have to replace
the whole thing.
Using Your Scale
So you've got that new scale home, and it's time to start cooking.
Of course you've popped over to the
several tempting treats that you are eager to re-create in your own
kitchen.
Luckily, using a good kitchen scale is easy. In fact, it's
substantially easier, not to mention a lot less messy, than
old-fashioned cup measures.
Taring
The most important thing to remember when using a kitchen scale is to
always tare it properly. Taring means eliminating the weight of the
bowl of other container from the weight of the food item it contains.
Normally, the best way to do this is to put the empty bowl on the
scale by itself. If you are using a spring scale, there will be a
knob or dial somewhere on the scale that you can turn until the scale
indicates zero, even though it has a bowl on it. On most digital
scales, there will be a tare button you can press which will reset the
scale to zero. On a balance scale, you will either have to add some
weights to the side of the balance opposite the bowl or move a sliding
weight along the beam of the balance to counter the weight of the
bowl.
Once you have properly tared your scale, you can slowly add the
ingredient you wish to measure to the bowl, carefully watching the
needle or digital display until it reaches the desired weight. If you
add too much, you can obviously scoop it back from the weighing bowl
into the storage container it came from. With a little practice,
however, you will find that you can dump in most of what you want,
then carefully sprinkle in the last ounce or two so that you never
overshoot your target.
For ingredients where a tablespoon or less is involved, it's
generally wise to stick with teaspoons and tablespoons. The reason is
that many kitchen scales are just not accurate enough. For example, if
you have a digital scale that works in 5g increments, and a recipe
asks for 7g, what do you do? Your scale either says 5g or 10g. It
can't display a 7. Newer scales are more commonly accurate to 2g, or
sometimes even 1g, which makes this problem less severe.
The big exceptions to the volume for small amounts rule are
salt and yeast. Salt is an exception because kosher salt takes up
twice the volume of regular salt, and so people will either put in
double, or half the amount they need if they mistakenly use the wrong
kind. Luckily, though, salt in many recipes is a matter of taste,
rather than exact amounts.
Yeast is an exception because getting it significantly wrong in
either direction can make a mess of your bread. Getting it wrong a
little can affect the rising time, which can be annoying, but is not
the end of the world. If you are using fresh yeast, many recipes call
for enough to weigh reasonably, around 15g or so.
The Single Bowl Approach
Weighing a bunch of ingredients for a recipe can take some time,
although rarely as much as carefully scooping and leveling with
measuring cups. Once you get pretty good at judging quantities by
weight, you may wish to adopt a single-bowl approach to weighing
several ingredients. The idea here is that instead of pouring each
ingredient out of the weighing bowl into a mixing bowl after weighing,
you simply re-tare the scale and load the next ingredient right in
on top of it. There are some risks to this approach; in particular,
if you put in too much of the second ingredient, you may have a hard
time scooping it out without removing some of the first ingredient.
Whether you use this technique or not depends largely on how careful
you generally are in adding ingredients, and how much you really care
about not having to wash that second bowl.
If you are dealing with metric units, the single bowl approach can
be extended to include water as well. The reason is that 1ml of water
has a mass of exactly 1g. So if a recipe calls for 400g of flour and
300g of water, you can weigh out the 400g of flour, tare the scale,
and then weigh another 300g of water into the same bowl. Note that
this does not necessarily apply to other liquids, which may have
different densities than water. Also, this does not work with US
standard weight and volume measures. In the US, one fluid ounce of
water weighs 1.0425 ounces.
Updating Existing Recipes
If you have a large collection of recipes calling for cup measures,
and you would like to convert them to more reliable and repeatable
weight-based recipes, it is not hard to do. There are three ways you
can do this. The supposedly simplest, but actually not so simple, and
unreliable to boot is the estimation method.
The second is by converting recipes on the
fly. The third is the difference
method. The latter two methods are the best to use whenever
possible.
The Estimation Method
The estimation method for converting recipes relies on the idea that
there is a standard amount of any given type of ingredient in a cup.
Unfortunately, that is the same fallacy that makes cup measurement of
dry ingredients problematic in the first place.
However, if we are willing to assume that there is a standard for
how much flour, sugar, etc... fills a cup, then we can easily
construct a table of conversion factors from volume to weight. For
example, an entry in the table might indicate that one cup of flour is
equivalent to 125g. So, we could convert the 1-1/2c of flour to
weight by multiplying 1.5 x 125 to get 187.5g, which we would probably
round to 190g. Conversion tables like this can be found at various
sites on the internet, but if you examine them, you will see that they
don't come close to agreeing with one another.
Despite the problems with this method, it is better than nothing.
Converting Recipes on the Fly
The obvious approach is to fill your cup measure with the same two
cups of flour you always use, packed exactly as you always pack it,
and then dump it into a pre-tared weighing bowl on your scale. Make a
not of the weight on the original recipe. Repeat for each dry
ingredient, and then you are done.
If you are unlucky with your cup measures, and your favorite recipe
doesn't come out quite right when you are gathering your weight
information, all is not lost. You still know exactly how much of each
ingredient you used in the botched attempt. It's much easier to use a
little more or less of a particular ingredient the next time when you
know precisely how much you used before. With the variation inherent
in cup measures, this would be almost impossible.
The Difference Method
Weighing each ingredient as you go is not the only way to determine
the weight of each ingredient in a recipe. If you are the kind of
cook who goes more by appearance and texture than by weight, adding a
few extra tablespoons of this ingredient or that, you can still
accurately record how much of each ingredient you used. The method
for doing this is called the difference method.
The first step in the difference method is to gather each of the
ingredients you intend to use, leaving them in their storage
containers. Before you start cooking, weigh each container. Don't
worry about taring the scale with an empty container first; simply
weigh the whole container and its contents. You can record the
weights either on a sheet of paper or on a post-it affixed to each
container.
The next step in the difference method is to actually cook your
dish. But you already know how to do that. So let's move on.
Once you have finished cooking, go back and weigh each of the
ingredient storage containers again. The weights should be less,
since you used some up. Now, subtract the after-cooking weight of
each container from the before-cooking weight to determine how much of
the ingredient you used. For example, suppose that before you started
your flour storage container weighed 5lbs 2oz (=82oz) and afterwords
it weighed 3lbs 14oz (=62oz). This means that you used 20oz, or 1lb
4oz of flour.
The difference method is also great for reconstructing secret or
unknown recipes, like your grandma's famous biscuits. If she has been
making them the same way for 65 years, she may not use a recipe at
all. If she does, it may be a cryptic one that only makes sense to
her, or in her kitchen. It may call for 2 regular scoops of flour,
but only she knows which scoop that means and how to pack it. If you
weigh her flour before and after the biscuit making, you'll know she
uses exactly 7oz.
What to do with Your Leftover Cup Measures
Once you start weighing ingredients, you'll never want to go back.
So what should you do with all those cup measures you have lying
around. One good thing you can do with them is put one into each of
your dry ingredient storage containers. You can still use them for
scooping the ingredient out onto the scale, just not for
measuring.
Liquid volume measures are also fine to keep around. Liquids may
change slightly in volume with changes in temperature, but the
variation is miniscule compared to the variation in weight of a
particular volume of most dry ingredients.
