Importance of Measuring Ingredients by Weight (3 Incredible benefits)

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Measuring ingredients by weight? In the kitchen business, it is likely that you will find most professional chefs using digital weight measuring tools to get the weight or volume of their cooking ingredients. In many American recipes, quantities of ingredients are specified by mass (weight), by volume (spoons, cups, teaspoons, ml) metrics.

There are many quantities, and volume is widely used in the USA. It makes more sense to work with precision than to just suggest qualitatively with ‘small’, ‘medium’ or ‘large size’. It is hard to quantify a ‘medium’ size beef,  instead  500 grams beef or 1 full kilo beef is more precise. Also, if you say add “one big onion”, it does not tell how much exactly it should be.

What is weight or mass?

Weight is a measure of how heavy a substance is. People use weight and mass interchangeably. Mass is actually the amount of material in an object, which does not change wherever you carry the object to. However, weight varies. A cup of flour won’t weight the same on earth and in the moon, but the amount of materials in that same cup of flour would remain the same.

You have heard people talk of grams of butter, grams of wheat flour, pounds of potatoes, kilograms of meat, and ounces of yeast. They all mean weight measurement. Weight or mass is measured in grams, pounds, ounces, kilograms and more.

Reasons to measure ingredients by weight

There are some troubles of not using weight measurement for ingredients. If you are going to prepare your pizza for dinner or the birthday of someone special to you. If your pizza recipes call for 2 ¾ cups of USDA bread flour, and 1/2 tsp pizza yeast, how would you measure it? Know that the real amount of the flour depends on many other factors other than the cup size.

• Did you spoon in the baking flour?
• Did you dip the cup into the flour?
• Did you pack down to level the flour off?
• Did you scrape the top of the measuring cup?
• Are all cups the same sizes?

Let us stop there. You see many variables that affect the quantity of flour for baking your pizza. If you are packing the flour, you are more likely to pour in more flour than the recipe needs. In that case, too much flour may cause you to vary if not double your yeast and other ingredients.

If that happens, you know the outcome? Your pizza may taste like shit. To prepare a perfect pizza recipe, you see that weight measurement has to come in and reduce those number of variables.

Case study: Weight Versus Volume of flour

The same cup of one type of light pack flour would weight fewer ounces than the same cup of heavily packed flour. You can try it out yourself. One cup of flour can measure 3 ounces and the same cup another kind of flour may measure 5 ½ ounces. That is a big flaw already when measuring by cups (volume measurement)

If you consider the density of your ingredients, you’ll find that measuring your cooking ingredients on a weight scale instead of the cups is the best way to ensure the perfect ingredient combination.

A bag of flour might be more compact than another. If the recipe developer had expected you to use the light packed, full, and aerated one flour. The same cup of heavily packed flour would probably just ruin the final product.

The importance of weight measuring cooking ingredients

What is the importance of weights and measurements of ingredients? What are the benefits of taking cooking weights and measures?

We all seek accuracy in our cooking business for a flavorful and savory taste. Weight measurement of cooking ingredients offers that needed accuracy. However, there are other benefits of measuring cooking ingredients by weight, than by volume.

1.  Weight measuring saves cooking time

You are not gonna like spending more of your recipes time calculating portions of yeast, flour and sugar required. The beautiful thing is, a weight measuring scale in your kitchen makes measurement pretty easier and faster.

The tar button on the kitchen scales helps to zero out or reset the readings of one ingredient and add quickly lets you to add the second ingredient, and so on. The reset button helps to quickly weight of many individual ingredients in a shorter time.

In Another case, the weight of your measuring container can badly affect the quantity of ingredient required in the recipe. If you don’t wanna spend time doing the brainwork subtraction yourself, get a digital scale. Most digital scales don’t just include the mass of the container in the final measurement, which saves cooking time.

2.   Measuring by weight helps to scale recipes

It is a lot easier to scale a cooking recipe up or down. There has been some unending debate online on whether you should double yeast when doubling your bread dough. This issue can be a lot easier to resolve if you measure your ingredients by weight.

If you pour in 2 ½ cups of your USDA All-purpose flour for baking, maintaining the original sugar to flour ration, the scale can help you determine how much sugar to add, if the flour is increased.

I love this trick. I have used it to scale up (double, triple) my recipes without having to engage my brain, and I got the same outcome with fewer errors.

Is it a lot of brainworks and time burning to measure out 1/3 teaspoon baking powder, ½ ounce sugar and count up to 12 cups bread flour? It is a lot easier when you put the ingredients on the measuring scale and let the weight do all the hard work.

3.  It guarantees less cleaning after cooking

One pain-in-the-ass, of cooking, is having to clean so many utensils and dishes in the kitchen after you are done with the recipe. With just one scale and one plastic bowl, you can measure all your cooking ingredients. Don’t you find it amazing that at the end, you only got to wash one single bowl or cup?

4. Helps you measure both dry and wet ingredient

Actually, the best and most accurate way to measure wet and dry ingredients is by weight. You can measure wet ingredients like oil, honey and dry ingredients like flour, sugar, yeast, all using one bowl. That makes all the work much easier.

How to convert recipes to weight measurements

In the United States of America, most kitchen recipes use volume measurement, especially the cup, teaspoons, milliliters and tablespoon measuring technique. But what if you include both the mass or weight and volume measurement in the preparation of your ingredients?

The advantage of including weight into your usual ingredient measurement by volume is that many other people of interest around the world would understand your recipes perfectly. So, if you have mastered volume measurement, here is how to convert the recipes to weight measurement.

1.  Directly weighing ingredients

Any ingredient you have already measured by volume, put it on the scale and measure its mass. Although it consumes more time as you have to measure for a second time, it makes your recipes more accessible when you record the ingredients in both volume and weight. Some of the mass or weight measuring tools include digital spoons, and weight scales.

2.  Use online weight conversion charts

There are thousands of volume to weight converters that you can use for a perfect ingredient measurement. Online calculators are available for baking ingredient measuring and there are many volumes to weight conversion charts and tables. Refer to the following in this site.

• Cups to grams ingredient measurement
• Tablespoons and Teaspoons to grams converter charts.
• Ingredient conversion to volume (milliliters)

3.     Do some brain calculations yourself

Grab a handy business calculator, enter to your kitchen and start calculating the ingredients weight. You are going to need a bit of arithmetic to be able to convert grams to milliliters or milliliters to grams, cups to grams, tablespoons to grams and so on and need be. You must know some basics for unit amounts.

Shop Ingredient weight measuring scales on Amazon

Ozeri ZK14-AB weight measuring scale 

EteckCity digital weight measurement scale 

Cooking Ingredient Weight Chart

Cooking ingredient volume to weight (grams) chart

Read More: how many teaspoons in an ounce Of Cooking Ingredients? 

How do you measure ingredients by weight?

How do you measure cooking ingredients? Simply set a measuring bowl on top the scale. Zero it out and add your ingredients. Some scales would let you choose the measurement unit. Set it to grams and take the weight readings.

How to tar your weight readings – weight measuring tip!

First, place the empty measuring container on the scale before you turn it on. The pour in your ingredients. The scale will automatically subtract the weight of container and give you an accurate measurement of your cooking ingredient. You don’t have to press any buttons.

How do you measure baking ingredients by weight in simple steps?

The best and most accurate way to measure wet and dry ingredients is by weight. First, how do o measure ingredients by weight?

• start by placing your empty mixing bowl on top of your scale
• hit the “tare” or “zero” button to reset the counter. This will account for the weight of the bowl and set your scale’s counter back to zero.
• Spoon in your flour into the bowl until it hits the weight you want.

Top tips for weight measures

1. Stick to the original recipe.

If you want to save more cooking time, stay with the original recipe scale and quantities.  Additionally, if you’re working with an American recipe in a British or Australian kitchen, experts recommend you convert everything to metric liters and milliliters. You can’t do this without good kitchen measuring equipment.

2. Get good measuring tools for cooking ingredients

If you invest in good measuring equipment like jugs, cups, teaspoons and weighing scales, you are going to be more accurate on your cooking business. These tools are clear and accurate. When shopping for ingredient measuring equipment, pick a weighing equipment that has many different types of units as possible. You know why, they would save you a huge amount of time.

3. Use only the appropriate scale.

A large practical measuring scale like grams instead of milligrams is good but where you need more accuracy and precision, go for the smallest practical measurement. For example,  measure four tablespoons instead of a ¼ cup.

4. Less is always more.

That is one measuring tip in culinary activities that I have heard more often. When dealing with herbs, spices and salt, a little do a long way because  you can always add more. It is sad to say, but you can never subtract or take them out once they’re added in much quantity.

5. Use  consistent measurement in all recipes.

Use only the same equipment throughout the entire process and for all the ingredient if you can. For example, use a single type of measuring spoons, for your yeast, salt, sugar, baking powder when baking your bread. You need consistence for balance.

Quantities don’t matter so much when it comes to flavor. What is extremely important is the relative proportions between your ingredients. What matters is maintaining the relative quantities of ingredients in balance.

 Grams and Ounces, Food Weight Scale for Cooking, and Baking. It is accurate with 0.05-Ounce Graduation, durable with tempered glass.

What are the measurements of weight for cooking?

What are the common measurement of weight and volume in food cooking? For weight or mass: grams, kilograms, Imperial pounds and ounces.  For volume, you have cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, pints, fluid , quarts, gallons, milliliters and stick.

Cooking conversion table (U.S.)

** cc = centimeters cube

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