Measure for Measure...

[joesan]

I just finished reading the excellent Q&A on Gourmet with Heston and Grant Achatz about their upcoming new books. The Q&A a great read and I can't wait to get my hands on these fine books.

One thing that Grant said really pleased me - "For us, we even went as far as breaking a pretty major rule here in the States: We’re doing all the recipes in Metric." I am tremendously pleased about this as I find translating a recipe from Cups, teaspoons, stick and tablespoons and other arcane measures extremely hit and miss and, well, lacking in accuracy. This is going to make anything from the book much easier.

But it got me thinking - don't you find it really hard to produce recipes accurately by measuring things by volume that are ideally measured by weight? I weigh everything including water to make my recipes more reproducible.

[Chris Amirault]

For me and a lot of members, The Kitchen Scale Manifesto is the word of law in the kitchen. So it warms my heart to read chef (and Society member) Achatz say,

Ten Speed Press is distributing the book—we’re self-publishing, we have 100 percent control, but Ten Speed was like, if you want to sell cookbooks, there’s no way people in the U.S. are going to buy it if you make them go out and buy a digital scale. And we said, well, then tough! Because like Heston just said, you can’t accurately weigh some of these things in 1/2 teaspoons and 1/8 teaspoons. You have to have an accurate gram scale; that’s just the way it is. So it’s going to be really interesting how people will respond to that.

For those buying one of these books and without a scale, click for a topic on the subject.

edited to clarify -- ca

Edited April 14, 2008 by chrisamirault (log)

[dougal]

...

For those buying one of these books and without a scale, click for a topic on the subject.

←

I've asked (on that "Kitchen Consumer" thread for tidyness) just how cheap a practical domestic digital kitchen scale can be nowadays.

Just exactly how low is the barrier to acceptance of accurate specification of ingredient quantities by weight?

My (added detail: digital, metric and imperial) kitchen scale cost £7.99 (say $16) sometime last year.

Is it below $10 yet in the USA?

Edited April 14, 2008 by dougal (log)

[rooftop1000]

I bought a lovely one for 50.00 back in December...dont even know where I put it

tracey