The argument for cooking with volume measurements, rather than weight
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Date: 2021-02-09
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Comments and reviews: 9
abendrot
so your argument is basically i'm used to it, so it's better. i've been using scales all my life and i don't even have a flour container, i just dumb the flour straight from the bag into the bowl. that's even less dirty dishes. i really couldn't care less about having to take the bowl off the mixer once or twice. and just because you're measuring by numbers doesn't mean you become a freakin cooking robot. yeah i go by weight, but i still know what my food is supposed to look and feel like, because i have eyes and nerve endings and from experience i can tell whether i'm using the correct amount of spinach or whether my cookie dough has the correct consistency. and (surpirse) it's way easier to get that feel right every time when you have a number to go by. i worked with cup measurements for a while because i was too lazy to convert my favorite cookie recipe to metric, and it was such a pain getting the right consistency each time. those people who wrote to you weren't dEmEnTed bY KitCHeN ScAlE, they were just inexperienced. also it wholly depends on what kind of cooking you're doing. unless i'm making a recipe for the first time i'm never gonna measure veggies by grams i just throw in however much looks right. but a few tens of grams of flour inaccuracy can mess up a whole cake. so in the end it all depends on how you're gonna apply the measuring method. i mean if you're happy with how you're doing it good for you, but i really don't think your arguments are gonna convert anyone who's been using metric all their life.
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so your argument is basically i'm used to it, so it's better. i've been using scales all my life and i don't even have a flour container, i just dumb the flour straight from the bag into the bowl. that's even less dirty dishes. i really couldn't care less about having to take the bowl off the mixer once or twice. and just because you're measuring by numbers doesn't mean you become a freakin cooking robot. yeah i go by weight, but i still know what my food is supposed to look and feel like, because i have eyes and nerve endings and from experience i can tell whether i'm using the correct amount of spinach or whether my cookie dough has the correct consistency. and (surpirse) it's way easier to get that feel right every time when you have a number to go by. i worked with cup measurements for a while because i was too lazy to convert my favorite cookie recipe to metric, and it was such a pain getting the right consistency each time. those people who wrote to you weren't dEmEnTed bY KitCHeN ScAlE, they were just inexperienced. also it wholly depends on what kind of cooking you're doing. unless i'm making a recipe for the first time i'm never gonna measure veggies by grams i just throw in however much looks right. but a few tens of grams of flour inaccuracy can mess up a whole cake. so in the end it all depends on how you're gonna apply the measuring method. i mean if you're happy with how you're doing it good for you, but i really don't think your arguments are gonna convert anyone who's been using metric all their life.
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food
This tool is objectively worse, so it encourages skillful use of it is such a bad argument imo.
Yes that's true. If I give you only dull knives to work with you'll learn very clever and effective ways to cut your ingredients, because you have to. And yes, someone with very sharp knives might become complacent and just slice things willy nilly because it's no effort anyway. But for inexperienced cooks having a sharp knife is a huge help, and for experienced chefs it's virtually indispensable.
Similarly if you have a bad scale of measurements, you'll get better at judging quantities yourself and improvising. But not every recipe can or should be improvised and having the option of letting go and just cooking by exact quantities can be extremely helpful, especially for beginners.
I only cook by weight and I stick fairly close to recipes if I don't know them yet and I'm not sure why the authors gave the quantities they did. Once I figure out what needs to be precise and what doesn't, and what measurements depend on my own situation and taste, I can start to improvise.
This is actually a reason why I really like the trend of online cooking videos: You guys usually don't just explain what you're doing, you're explaining why you're doing it and what happens if you don't.
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This tool is objectively worse, so it encourages skillful use of it is such a bad argument imo.
Yes that's true. If I give you only dull knives to work with you'll learn very clever and effective ways to cut your ingredients, because you have to. And yes, someone with very sharp knives might become complacent and just slice things willy nilly because it's no effort anyway. But for inexperienced cooks having a sharp knife is a huge help, and for experienced chefs it's virtually indispensable.
Similarly if you have a bad scale of measurements, you'll get better at judging quantities yourself and improvising. But not every recipe can or should be improvised and having the option of letting go and just cooking by exact quantities can be extremely helpful, especially for beginners.
I only cook by weight and I stick fairly close to recipes if I don't know them yet and I'm not sure why the authors gave the quantities they did. Once I figure out what needs to be precise and what doesn't, and what measurements depend on my own situation and taste, I can start to improvise.
This is actually a reason why I really like the trend of online cooking videos: You guys usually don't just explain what you're doing, you're explaining why you're doing it and what happens if you don't.
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Gerrie
I m an American living in Scotland for the last 4 years. When I use a recipe from here, I mostly use the weights in the recipe, because it s actually easier than having to convert things all the time. The kitchen scale and liquid measuring cups can be used for metric and non-metric units, as needed. But I often use American recipes for things they don t eat here, like cornbread and buttermilk biscuits. So I brought with me, an American set of measuring cups and spoons for those times. My liquid measuring cup (bought here) has ounces and cups on one side, and metric on the other. BUT I have to be careful, because an Imperial cup is not 8 ounces, and an Imperial pint is not 16 ounces. So for an American recipe I have to know the equations, like 1 cup=8 oz, and follow the ounce markings and ignore the cups and pints. And butter is a lot of fun, because in America you can go by measurements on the wrapper to get 5 tablespoons of it or a cup of it, but butter wrappers here mark grams, or are not there. It s not possible, like he said, to use weight only. We all have to learn how to measure both ways plus use cooking sense.
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I m an American living in Scotland for the last 4 years. When I use a recipe from here, I mostly use the weights in the recipe, because it s actually easier than having to convert things all the time. The kitchen scale and liquid measuring cups can be used for metric and non-metric units, as needed. But I often use American recipes for things they don t eat here, like cornbread and buttermilk biscuits. So I brought with me, an American set of measuring cups and spoons for those times. My liquid measuring cup (bought here) has ounces and cups on one side, and metric on the other. BUT I have to be careful, because an Imperial cup is not 8 ounces, and an Imperial pint is not 16 ounces. So for an American recipe I have to know the equations, like 1 cup=8 oz, and follow the ounce markings and ignore the cups and pints. And butter is a lot of fun, because in America you can go by measurements on the wrapper to get 5 tablespoons of it or a cup of it, but butter wrappers here mark grams, or are not there. It s not possible, like he said, to use weight only. We all have to learn how to measure both ways plus use cooking sense.
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Irthevks
I generally prefer cooking by weight. I also use volume measurements, they're very quick and therefore convenient.
But weights is simply much more reliable.
700 grams of potatoes can be anything from 3 to 15. Yeah, I won't hit 700 exactly, but I'm probably happy anywhere from 650-800.
1 large onion is what? What if I only have small onions, is 2 or 3 small onions one large?
One volume unit of chopped onions is what? That changes depending on how fine I chop.
150 grams of onion is reliably 150 grams. I mostly won't care to be all that close to that 150, 125-175 is probably the range that I would be happy in.
I know that most recipes are written with quite a lot of variance accounted for in the amounts (and with bread it's a necessity to adapt it due to how flour differ, weights help me know how I differ from the original recipe. It helps me account for those changes I am forced to make.
Also, it's very easy to scale a recipe measured in weights. Going down 25%, or 17%, 87%. Easy by weight - often troublesome by volume.
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I generally prefer cooking by weight. I also use volume measurements, they're very quick and therefore convenient.
But weights is simply much more reliable.
700 grams of potatoes can be anything from 3 to 15. Yeah, I won't hit 700 exactly, but I'm probably happy anywhere from 650-800.
1 large onion is what? What if I only have small onions, is 2 or 3 small onions one large?
One volume unit of chopped onions is what? That changes depending on how fine I chop.
150 grams of onion is reliably 150 grams. I mostly won't care to be all that close to that 150, 125-175 is probably the range that I would be happy in.
I know that most recipes are written with quite a lot of variance accounted for in the amounts (and with bread it's a necessity to adapt it due to how flour differ, weights help me know how I differ from the original recipe. It helps me account for those changes I am forced to make.
Also, it's very easy to scale a recipe measured in weights. Going down 25%, or 17%, 87%. Easy by weight - often troublesome by volume.
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Magic
I disagree with a lot of your reasons, mainly regarding dishes and eyeballing. I personally suck at eyeballing stuff. I think the geometry of a heap of grated cheese or triangle block of cheese is difficult to judge the size of. How do I know when I've grated half of this block of parmesan by eye? And grated cheese is even more tricky since it's so compressible.
I do concede that you can't take a pot from a hot stove to a scale. Measuring salt and baking powder with a measuring spoon is also the only option (what I previously said about the heap shape that you'd get with a regular spoon. Other than that I think there's no reason to measure something like flour or sugar etc. by volume. Pouring from the flour bag works fine for me. Sometimes I even use the lip of the bag to scoop some back up no problem. When I'm done adding one ingredient I reset the scale and pour the next ingredient. Measuring by weight saves more dishes for me.
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I disagree with a lot of your reasons, mainly regarding dishes and eyeballing. I personally suck at eyeballing stuff. I think the geometry of a heap of grated cheese or triangle block of cheese is difficult to judge the size of. How do I know when I've grated half of this block of parmesan by eye? And grated cheese is even more tricky since it's so compressible.
I do concede that you can't take a pot from a hot stove to a scale. Measuring salt and baking powder with a measuring spoon is also the only option (what I previously said about the heap shape that you'd get with a regular spoon. Other than that I think there's no reason to measure something like flour or sugar etc. by volume. Pouring from the flour bag works fine for me. Sometimes I even use the lip of the bag to scoop some back up no problem. When I'm done adding one ingredient I reset the scale and pour the next ingredient. Measuring by weight saves more dishes for me.
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Daniel
I think its really interesting that many people that have messaged you because of non working recipes used grams. It sounds more like a thing of someone who is not being used to cooking or baking, rather than being the result of mesuring by volume or weight. But on the other hand if that were to be true, why should there be more people for which the recipes havent worked that used grams? Is it possible that people in the metric world that watch your videos have less cooking experience? Is that divide in non-/metric world even usefull since many people in the US have started using metric weight in their home kitchen? Long story short, i have no damn clue why you primarily get messages from people who use metric weights to cook about non working recipes, but what I can tell you is, that it took me longer to write this comment on my phone than I have thought about this. Cheers
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I think its really interesting that many people that have messaged you because of non working recipes used grams. It sounds more like a thing of someone who is not being used to cooking or baking, rather than being the result of mesuring by volume or weight. But on the other hand if that were to be true, why should there be more people for which the recipes havent worked that used grams? Is it possible that people in the metric world that watch your videos have less cooking experience? Is that divide in non-/metric world even usefull since many people in the US have started using metric weight in their home kitchen? Long story short, i have no damn clue why you primarily get messages from people who use metric weights to cook about non working recipes, but what I can tell you is, that it took me longer to write this comment on my phone than I have thought about this. Cheers
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Tobit
one issue with the only need one cup; one spoon, especially wrt volume is visible -- when you're measuring with a (non-right-angled) cup, the halfway mark is not your friend, even though your visual intuition is telling you it is -- at 10: 16, when you filled up the spoon about a quarter (25%) of the way in linear distance, that is only 15% of the volume -- I think that humans are not as good at intuitive volume measurements as you say, as we are primed for linear distances, not 3D
(for the calculation of the volume, I ended up needing to do the integral from 1/2 to 1 of pi (1-z 2)dz, which gives an idea of the unintuitive nature of the problem)
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one issue with the only need one cup; one spoon, especially wrt volume is visible -- when you're measuring with a (non-right-angled) cup, the halfway mark is not your friend, even though your visual intuition is telling you it is -- at 10: 16, when you filled up the spoon about a quarter (25%) of the way in linear distance, that is only 15% of the volume -- I think that humans are not as good at intuitive volume measurements as you say, as we are primed for linear distances, not 3D
(for the calculation of the volume, I ended up needing to do the integral from 1/2 to 1 of pi (1-z 2)dz, which gives an idea of the unintuitive nature of the problem)
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Lipsum
I don't mind measuring most things by volume, it's probably the easiest way for almost everything tbh. But please please STOP trying to make me use tablespoons as a way to measure butter that's just so weird why do so many recipes do this? Butter isn't a liquid or a powder, it'd be such a mess to try to judge wether the spoon is like full enough or if you're grabbing too much (and that's not to mention sticks cause I've got no idea what that's even supposed to be)
Anyways, just tell me how many grams I need and I'll cut a piece off the block with a knife exactly where that ruler at the back of the pack tells me to do it
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I don't mind measuring most things by volume, it's probably the easiest way for almost everything tbh. But please please STOP trying to make me use tablespoons as a way to measure butter that's just so weird why do so many recipes do this? Butter isn't a liquid or a powder, it'd be such a mess to try to judge wether the spoon is like full enough or if you're grabbing too much (and that's not to mention sticks cause I've got no idea what that's even supposed to be)
Anyways, just tell me how many grams I need and I'll cut a piece off the block with a knife exactly where that ruler at the back of the pack tells me to do it
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nanoUSB
Having recently gotten myself a set of US cups & spoons to try it out, I gotta say I enjoy both.
I think measuring by weight can make it a little easier to vary recipes in specific directions, or improve them if you think there's something off about x, should try with more/less y next time. Cups especially don't seem very handy for that.
Gotta say though, cups and spoons are incredibly comfortable to use, for both solid and liquid ingredients. Not only that, I can now try out American recipes directly, without the worry about did I convert this right? does that apply to liters too? why is this so complicated? :)
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Having recently gotten myself a set of US cups & spoons to try it out, I gotta say I enjoy both.
I think measuring by weight can make it a little easier to vary recipes in specific directions, or improve them if you think there's something off about x, should try with more/less y next time. Cups especially don't seem very handy for that.
Gotta say though, cups and spoons are incredibly comfortable to use, for both solid and liquid ingredients. Not only that, I can now try out American recipes directly, without the worry about did I convert this right? does that apply to liters too? why is this so complicated? :)
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