My problem with metric recipes
video description
Date: 2019-12-30
Related videos
Comments and reviews: 9
Donar
3: 37 You shouldn't round 709ml to 700ml, because you basically added 10% pasta. You should add 10% first and then round, so 750ml would be a much better quantity than 700ml; around 775ml would probably be best, but that would lead to problems with some measuring cups. Anyway, I'm translating a lot of recipes to metric myself. I first write down the exact converted quantities, convert the main ingredient (like the amount of pasta or protein) to a common package size, apply the same percentage to all other quantities and then round them to the next best values. Especially tablespoons and teaspoons are horrible to convert, but most of the time I know by experience if I would like a little bit more or less in my final product. If possible, I try to keep the American measurements though; for that purpose I bought a set of American measuring cups and spoons. I'm also getting my ground meat from the butcher, so I don't have to get 500g, but can easily get 453g. I just can't order a pound, because here in Germany that's 500g.
reply
3: 37 You shouldn't round 709ml to 700ml, because you basically added 10% pasta. You should add 10% first and then round, so 750ml would be a much better quantity than 700ml; around 775ml would probably be best, but that would lead to problems with some measuring cups. Anyway, I'm translating a lot of recipes to metric myself. I first write down the exact converted quantities, convert the main ingredient (like the amount of pasta or protein) to a common package size, apply the same percentage to all other quantities and then round them to the next best values. Especially tablespoons and teaspoons are horrible to convert, but most of the time I know by experience if I would like a little bit more or less in my final product. If possible, I try to keep the American measurements though; for that purpose I bought a set of American measuring cups and spoons. I'm also getting my ground meat from the butcher, so I don't have to get 500g, but can easily get 453g. I just can't order a pound, because here in Germany that's 500g.
reply
Kuya Leinad
Thank goodness bread bakers had come up with Bakers percentages which gives pretty accurate reproducibility irregardless of the measuring system used: )It only works well with baking though since you set the main ingredient (in this case flour) at 100% and put the other ingredients as a percentage in relation to the flour. So you keep the proportion of the ingredients consistent. You cant really use it for recipes with no main ingredients (but thats pretty rare anyways. I find it very helpful to put an imperial recipe in bakers percentages first then put it in metric so that the proportions remain the same. Its a lot of maths but its ok for me: )Problem is that portioning can be tricky with bakers percentages: ( Like if you dont know how much cookies you can make from 500g of flour, then you might end up making less than you need: /
reply
Thank goodness bread bakers had come up with Bakers percentages which gives pretty accurate reproducibility irregardless of the measuring system used: )It only works well with baking though since you set the main ingredient (in this case flour) at 100% and put the other ingredients as a percentage in relation to the flour. So you keep the proportion of the ingredients consistent. You cant really use it for recipes with no main ingredients (but thats pretty rare anyways. I find it very helpful to put an imperial recipe in bakers percentages first then put it in metric so that the proportions remain the same. Its a lot of maths but its ok for me: )Problem is that portioning can be tricky with bakers percentages: ( Like if you dont know how much cookies you can make from 500g of flour, then you might end up making less than you need: /
reply
Albert Kayed
Hi Adam, Albert from Czech Republic here. Do you believe that in certain recipes or when working with certain ingredients, metric system just works better? You made me think of a Binging with Babish episode, where he failed while baking a bread like 2 or 3 times, because he measured the flour by cups (volume, until he started to measure it by grams (weight. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume X ounces of flour would sound as wrong to you as X liters of flour would sound to me in a baking recipe. If this volume vs. weight hypothesis is true, you'd arrive at a conclusion that using anglo-american recipes for baking is just wrong and worse. Have you seen that episode? Have you tested the hypothesis? What are your thoughts on this?
reply
Hi Adam, Albert from Czech Republic here. Do you believe that in certain recipes or when working with certain ingredients, metric system just works better? You made me think of a Binging with Babish episode, where he failed while baking a bread like 2 or 3 times, because he measured the flour by cups (volume, until he started to measure it by grams (weight. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume X ounces of flour would sound as wrong to you as X liters of flour would sound to me in a baking recipe. If this volume vs. weight hypothesis is true, you'd arrive at a conclusion that using anglo-american recipes for baking is just wrong and worse. Have you seen that episode? Have you tested the hypothesis? What are your thoughts on this?
reply
Happyrooster
Honestly this video was really non-sensical. If you have left-over pasta in your pantry that makes you feel guilty about throwing it but you can't really make a proper dish with it buy the same quantity of pasta, and if you do the same recipe, you'll have twice the amount you had left before, meaning you'll be able to use it? If the recipe itself leaves you with barely any pasta left, just throw that in, it's homecooking, not a god damn 3 michelin-star restaurant. If you can't make simple adjustments to make the recipe work for your own system then you're just a bad cook, and if you have left over ingredients just use them for something else, it's not rocket-science.
reply
Honestly this video was really non-sensical. If you have left-over pasta in your pantry that makes you feel guilty about throwing it but you can't really make a proper dish with it buy the same quantity of pasta, and if you do the same recipe, you'll have twice the amount you had left before, meaning you'll be able to use it? If the recipe itself leaves you with barely any pasta left, just throw that in, it's homecooking, not a god damn 3 michelin-star restaurant. If you can't make simple adjustments to make the recipe work for your own system then you're just a bad cook, and if you have left over ingredients just use them for something else, it's not rocket-science.
reply
8sebastian
This video is so redundant. Like you said at the end, recipes are just concepts for us to mold and customize to our own liking/tastes. like the taste of garlic? Throw an extra clove or 2 in there, not the biggest fan of spiciness? use half or even a quarter of what the recipe calls for. Also based on the fact that only 3 countries use the imperial system (and 2 of those I wouldn't really consider having their shit together, I'll let you decide which) The title should be called 'the problem with imperial recipes'. y'know seeing as more people would be converting recipes from imperial to metric, than metric to imperial.
reply
This video is so redundant. Like you said at the end, recipes are just concepts for us to mold and customize to our own liking/tastes. like the taste of garlic? Throw an extra clove or 2 in there, not the biggest fan of spiciness? use half or even a quarter of what the recipe calls for. Also based on the fact that only 3 countries use the imperial system (and 2 of those I wouldn't really consider having their shit together, I'll let you decide which) The title should be called 'the problem with imperial recipes'. y'know seeing as more people would be converting recipes from imperial to metric, than metric to imperial.
reply
Ryan Flanagan
I do not get the difficulty in changing an imperial recipe in to metric. I do it every time I see an imperial recipe. For your mac and cheese recipe, you take 500g, divide it by 453, to get your factor (1. 1) then you multiply all the other ingredients by that number, so 709ml of milk becomes 779. This would be extremely easy to do on your end, and the other ingredients still flow from the base (the pasta, and the other ingredients are still easy for metric people to weigh out (because we're not using cups anyway, one would use a jug or scales to measure out 779ml of milk)
reply
I do not get the difficulty in changing an imperial recipe in to metric. I do it every time I see an imperial recipe. For your mac and cheese recipe, you take 500g, divide it by 453, to get your factor (1. 1) then you multiply all the other ingredients by that number, so 709ml of milk becomes 779. This would be extremely easy to do on your end, and the other ingredients still flow from the base (the pasta, and the other ingredients are still easy for metric people to weigh out (because we're not using cups anyway, one would use a jug or scales to measure out 779ml of milk)
reply
Shadow Gamer
Talk about a completely inconsequential video. Dude it really isn't an issue, and also, Europeans have the ability to measure in cups too I know what a concept If I am making an American recipe, I can look up how much a cup is, find the equivalent cup in my cupboard, and make the recipe with no conversions. It's not really an issue. And you admit so yourself. 4 degrees aren't going to make a difference I guarantee that. And you yourself don't follow strict measurements in any of your vids. One carrot for the risotto translates pretty well to metric I assure you
reply
Talk about a completely inconsequential video. Dude it really isn't an issue, and also, Europeans have the ability to measure in cups too I know what a concept If I am making an American recipe, I can look up how much a cup is, find the equivalent cup in my cupboard, and make the recipe with no conversions. It's not really an issue. And you admit so yourself. 4 degrees aren't going to make a difference I guarantee that. And you yourself don't follow strict measurements in any of your vids. One carrot for the risotto translates pretty well to metric I assure you
reply
Ian Boylan
I have the same problem when watching your recipes. I have no idea what a cup is, a quart or any of the Imperial. I do know a pound translates to 454g(you said 453 in the video, but if a pound of beef mince is sold here, it's 454g to round it off, since it's an uneven number. Milliliters, grams etc is what we would deal with and I usually just Google if I'm doing one of your recipes, but it is appreciated that you are doing the conversions in the video to save time. Also, what is up with the dislikes on this video? I'm guessing it might be the title.
reply
I have the same problem when watching your recipes. I have no idea what a cup is, a quart or any of the Imperial. I do know a pound translates to 454g(you said 453 in the video, but if a pound of beef mince is sold here, it's 454g to round it off, since it's an uneven number. Milliliters, grams etc is what we would deal with and I usually just Google if I'm doing one of your recipes, but it is appreciated that you are doing the conversions in the video to save time. Also, what is up with the dislikes on this video? I'm guessing it might be the title.
reply
NeonGooRoo
Russian here, let me correct you. Siniy is just blue, not specically dark one. For dark blue we literally have dark blue (temno-siniy) I guess the difference is we have more color names in common speech I guess. For example we often use a word for light green - salatoviy, or buriy for purple-ish brown etc. While English probably has words for these colors too, they aren't used much. Reverse thing is with magenta and cyan. In Russian almost no one but designers use these words, but in English you hear them not so rarely, because of printers I guess.
reply
Russian here, let me correct you. Siniy is just blue, not specically dark one. For dark blue we literally have dark blue (temno-siniy) I guess the difference is we have more color names in common speech I guess. For example we often use a word for light green - salatoviy, or buriy for purple-ish brown etc. While English probably has words for these colors too, they aren't used much. Reverse thing is with magenta and cyan. In Russian almost no one but designers use these words, but in English you hear them not so rarely, because of printers I guess.
reply
Add a review, comment
Other channel videos
