Submitted 7 months ago by i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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?
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.
😭😭😭
Measuring cups (special cup and fractional cup sized cups) are pretty convenient.
Although it’s worth bearing in mind that a US cup is 240ml, while a Imperial (British) cup is 250ml.
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.
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
Assuming you’re not trolling, flour has variable density depending on how you scoop or squish it. Packed or unpacked brown sugar?
Stubborn, i guess
Measuring by volume is fewer steps. You fill it up to the line, done. Much easier than guessing, checking the weight, adjusting etc.
I don’t think Americans are the only ones who do it the easier way…
Measuring by weight is great for pros who want to work fast. Most people are not pros.
Almost everything sold in USA is measured in metric and imperial units (technically wrong name, US customary units). You can get by with either.
Also, the measuring by volume can be bad for salts, because different types take up different volume amounts. A tale of two salts by Chef John (foodwishes channel on YouTube) has a nice little video about this: youtube.com/watch?v=XGCY9Cpia_A
Adam ragusea has some good video explaining both why we use volume and why we don’t use metric
I tried watching it. I gave up in European.
youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY?si=ZJ7sKhOdiHxozSUO
Another video that explains stuff on the imperial system that fits.
Hehe, not to offend anyone but I think Americans just like crazy units that are either cumbersome, difficult to convert or in this case imprecise as most ingredients vary in density, depending on which flour you chose and how you put it in.
My guess is unwillingness to improve anything and an inability to learn for a subset of people.
Fun fact : in France we mesure by weight except for the “gâteau au yaourt”. The yoghurt cake is the most basic cake with each family having it’s own recipe, a bit like maybe muffins in other places and this cake is entierly mesured in volumes.
Cups is a volumetric measurement. Honestly I’d be fine with switching to liters for measurements, or deciliters or whatever makes sense. Gravimetric measurements never made intuitive sense to me.
Perhaps that’s because it’s what you know best and are used to. Volumetric measurements of anything that doesn’t have a fixed density make no sense to me. What the hell is one cup of broccoli? Even a cup of flour can have wildly different ammounts of flour. My least favorite though is butter, how the hell am I supposed to measure out 3 tablespoons of butter? Melt it all on the stove and pour out what I need? I find it incredibly unintuitive.
In the US, sticks of butter have tablespoon measurements printed on the label, like this: www.errenskitchen.com/…/butter-sticks.jpg
Most people leave the sticks of butter in the fridge with the labels on. If you want X tablespoons of butter, you cut through the label and butter at the right mark.
I’m not saying it’s an ideal system (I also prefer recipes that use weights) but it works.
What the hell is one cup of broccoli?
How does this confuse you? Get a measuring cup, scoop up brocoli. If it’s a large, whole broccoli, the recipe will say that.
Adding an extra step to weigh everything is stupid.
And the volume of butter changes a lot when melted. If thé recipe dont precise the form, you’ll need multiple try juste to know if you recipe actually works.
Because we adore being different and difficult just for the hell of it.
Just buy cup and spoon measures. It simplifies the whole process. You already own metric measures so whats the difference.
If a recipe describes 8 cups of flour, how many grams or kilograms do i need to buy then?
The packaging will tell you, but I think most people just buy in bulk rather than buy the exact amount needed for a recipe.
If you owned a cup measure you might have some idea.
If a recipe calls for 8 cups of flour you will need a bigger baking tin.
What you don’t got a cup
16 tablespoons or 48 teaspoons.
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.
Only if you have cup sized cups. Otherwise it’s just gonna throw your ratios off
We have measuring cups, along with similarly standardized spoons and liquid cups same measurement just a different form factor.
Everyone who cooks has at least one set. I literally never had (nor needed) a scale in the kitchen until I started baking, in my forties.
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. 🤷
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
God gave us two hands and 10 fingers. USE DUODECIMAL, PEOPLE
But what if you’re baking, then the measurements are important
Some good answers here, thanks everyone, I’ve learnt some stuff today. 🙂
Thanks for actually being interested in the discussion.
Tradition, and its dumb as hell since we have set the official definition of every “imperial measure” to metric we just keep using the silly ones.
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
What’s troublesome with that is American cups are something like 237ml and a Canadian cup is 250ml, a quart a litre and a gallon 4 litres.
Makes using American recipes a bit finicky. So now I convert recipes to weight. Though I basically never use a scale or measuring cup when actually cooking.
Silly question: are all cups the same volume? I didn’t bother to measure but the cup i use to scoop rice seems very different in size from the one I use for dog food…
A measuring cup is literally designed to be a consistent volume.
Not like a drinking cup or whatever
Yeah, a measurement cup is half a pint. They are defined volumes
US pint* which is 473 ml. Not to be confused with the UK pint, which is 568 ml.
Nope. I mean technically they are supposed to be. But in practice, absolutely not. Im pretty sure manufacturers just make cups with random lines on it.
This is why I have a dry and a wet measuring cups. Although that still isn’t a standard. But at least if you consistently use the same cup for the same thing you can fine tune it that way.
If your cup measurements are not the same you need new measuring cups.
A rice cup is 3/4 US customary cup.
I like using my scale, but it’s a cheap PoS and shuts off after 10 seconds of inactivity. I really need to upgrade to a better one.
I prefer my mechanical scale.
I’m honestly surprised that this solution to my problem never even occurred to me. I guess I’m gonna go look for a decent mechanical scale now. Any recommendations?
1/3 centilitre? So 3.333ml bottles? You drink only 13ml of water a day?
Yeah but it sounds less cool if you say thirteen point three millilitres than to say Four (4) TRIOS™!!!
Whoops, I fucked up. I meant to say ⅓ liter
Downvote me. Do it.
They have a high alcohol diet?
I’ve been cooking a lot lately. I don’t measure anything. I eyeball my most stuff anyway. If I understand the recipe, then I know how much is needed. It takes practice, but it’s much easier than weighing or using measuring cups.
Do you really believe that the people who wrote the recipe measured everything to perfection while keeping score of the exact amounts and timing through trial and error? No, they didn’t. They made something and then estimated roughly how much they used when writing the recipe afterwards.
The initial recipe that would be true.
But then they use the recipe card and make the dish and realize “oops need more of that” Then they update the card and make sure the recipe is correct.
Cups are great, the real annoyances are pints, quarts and gallons. Really no reason to use any of those when you can just state it in cups. Then we threw in fluid ounces for that extra layer of confusion and conversion.
Cups are great,
Looking at the wide range of cups in my drawer, I’m not so sure, tbh.
We don’t … literally use random cups lmao.
I measure boobs in cups because I’m a savage.
Vandal Savage?
We can’t measure them in feet or inches because it would be ambiguous about how wide to make it
As evidence I would like to enter the subway foot-long controversy
Elaphant’s foot pizza should be a thing!
Asclepiaz@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
Dkarma@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
r_se_random@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
You could put the jar of peanut butter on the scale and measure what amount you’re taking out?
nyctre@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Look, it’s like this…
Method 1: you get a bowl and put it on the scale. You then dump everything into it or you get a new bowl for each ingredient if you need to keep them separate.
Method 2: you get a bowl and a cup. You measure into the cup and dump the stuff in the bowl then wash the cup and then you measure the next thing then you wash again and so on.
Sometimes washing isn’t needed, sure. But you still put stuff in the cup then move it rather than putting jt directly in the bowl.
With spoons it’s even worse because for spices, for example, many of them (at least here) come like this so spoons don’t fit…so good luck pouring out of it and into a spoon and not making a mess
KrankyKong@lemmy.world 7 months ago
How do you convert cups to weight accurately when a cup of one thing might weigh more than a cup of a different thing?
meekah@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Thankfully the densoty of most foods is known
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Measure it out the hard way once and note the weight. I do that every time I have a recipe using cups just to make my life easier. Once the recipe is properly noted, I can just put a bowl on the scale and hit the tare button after each step.