Using measurement cups for non-liquid items seems to be the standard in the United States, at least for baking. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t use measuring cups.
I don’t know why as it can create problems, especially with baking. I hate when recipes say “1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar”…how firm do I need to pack this thing?! I would love if the cooking community would somehow magically switch overnight to using grams for a more precise measurement, but you’ll be hard pressed to find many baking recipes in the U.S that use weight measurements as opposed to cups and spoons.
If they change everything to weight then people like my mother would be constantly getting everything wrong because, when weight is specified, she always measures it with the ounces scale on her measuring cup (unless she uses an entire package of the correct weight).
When I try to explain to her why this is wrong, all I get is a “tut tut, I know what I’m doing” noise.
I personally hate recipes that assume you’re only going to be using canned or only fresh items.
Like what the hell is a “medium”-sized fresh tomato’s worth of canned tomatoes, when I’m throwing it in a long-cooking stew anyway and don’t need the fresh flavor to be up front? I had to kind of eyeball it.
Or when you mostly cook from dried beans, and you have some chickpeas you cooked and the recipe calls for a 14-oz can of chickpeas… There I sit, trying to think about whether the can means by volume or by weight, and if the latter, do they mean the “dry” weight or the weight with the canning liquid? I’m pretty sure that it means the dry weight, so I’ve been going with that and it seems to work so far.
Also: hate it when recipes mention herbs but don’t specify dried or fresh. I expect dried in everyday-style cookbooks, in most cases, but in magazines like Gourmet/Bon Appetit/Saveur, what are they using? Since they’re more “fancy” do they expect you’ll go with fresh preferentially? Sometimes you can guess by context or amount used. I wish they’d have a disclaimer printed somewhere in their “glossary”-type section, like “If we do not specify otherwise, assume that herbs are dried” or something similar.
There is no mass measurements using measuring cups. Measuring cups for non-liquids generally don’t have any other markings, you just fill them all the way up and level them off. Measuring cups for liquids are marked in cups (1/4 1/2, 3/4, 1) as well as fluid oz (8 fl oz = 1 cup).
If you have a US recipe that calls for 2 oz of flour then they mean weight and you should use a scale.
As others have said, recipes that use weights for non-liquids are easier, but the vast majority of US recipes specify volume.
I’m sure a 14 oz can of beans is 14 oz, cooked and with the liquid. (As in, if you poured a can out it would be 14 oz.) Why on earth would it be dried?
And if not otherwise specified I always assume herbs are fresh.
That would mean a can of chickpeas that says 14-oz (weight) on the side, which will include the weight of the liquid. If the recioe does not say to drain them, they probably expect you to add the whole thing.
Cook Wise has a great chart showing the weight of things like “spooned” vs “dipped” flour, sifted vs unsifted, firmly packed sugar, and other useful info.
Thisis what I have.
Recipes just about always assume you drain and rinse canned beans. (Canned bean liquid is yucky.)
And I wasn’t assuming dried weight, I was wondering what volume or weight of cooked beans would equal a given’s can worth of canned beans.
Thanks for the CookWise props - I’ve been reading for years that I should get that book; I guess this is more reason to do so. I already have resources like that for baking ingredients; does it also cover other ingredient conversions?
I keep one of these, filled with olive oil, next to the stove, since that’s the only place I use olive oil. I’ve heard that you shouldn’t keep it at room temperature, because it goes bad . . . but if you keep in in the refrigerator it solidifies. I don’t want to have to warm it up every time I need a squirt or two; it’s so convenient the way I have it. So what’s the harm in continuing to keep it this way?
Only in the US. I hate that ditty, it’s such a lie.
if it wasn’t by weight, then I’d expect a canned item to say 14 fl. oz.
I agree. But my poorly-phrased complaint was that if I’m looking at a recipe that says “14 oz can of chickpeas”, and I have freshly-cooked chickpeas and no can… I don’t really know what the can says. :smack: A lot of recipes aren’t well-written and will just interchangeably say “oz.” to describe a canned item, and I just don’t trust that.
Experiment time, I think.
It means the weight of what is in the can with the liquid.
It’s a little different than what I’m used to, but it is good. Still, like I said above, I do it differently. I start with a hot pan (well, medium hot, like 7/10 on the gas burner, not quite blazing hot like I said above), add the eggs, let slightly set, and immediately start scrambling. I let it slightly set again, and then scramble some more. I like my eggs with identifiable pieces/strands of white and I take it off the heat while it’s still a bit wet, as I like my eggs on the runnier side and the residual heat does firm them up. The whole process takes 1-2 minutes for me. That said, that’s the way I personally like them. A lot of people prefer the more homogenous method, where they beat the eggs in a bowl (sometimes with a bit of water or milk) completely before pouring them into a pan and cook it up over a more moderate or low heat.
Yes, that’s what I meant by “hopper.” I use something like this, but it’s the same idea. There is a wide range of dough viscosities that will work, but, as I said above, I like it like a very thick pancake batter. Somewhere in thickness between a batter and a loose dough. Basically, the way I do it, the batter is mixable with a fork and it will stick to your fork when you lift it up, but there is still enough water in the mixture that it drips down, albeit very, very slowly. I’ve seen people do it thicker than this, where it’s more like a very wet dough than a dry batter. Give it a shot and see what you like. Another tip: if you want to lighten up your dough, use soda water instead of tap water.
You’re not going to screw the recipe up by using a little bit more or a little bit less in chickpeas. Just use your judgement. There’s no reason “14 oz” is exactly the magic number, except that it’s the size cans happen to come in. You know how big a 14 oz can is, right? Now use about that much in freshly cooked chickpeas.
Yeah, ideally that’s true if someone’s proofreading their recipes properly before publication. If not and the cans really say “fl oz” rather than just “oz” as written in the recipe, then things might get ugly.
I just checked on a can of Red Gold brand Diced Tomatoes, listed as being “net wt 14.5 oz” on the label. The entire contents weighed out at 14 5/8 oz by my scale, so that’s excellent. With a “medium” level of draining (put into strainer, “toss” tomatoes a bit, no pressing), it dropped down to 9 1/4 oz of remaining product. Ingredient substituters beware, as recipes sometimes call for draining a can of diced tomatoes before use, so trying to figure out how to use fresh instead of an already-cooked diced tomato with juice may take some thinking.
I did a ton of tomato home canning at the end of summer, so those are in pint jars. Weight vs volume was on my mind for tomatoes. 
Guess I’ll have to buy a couple cans of my most favored beans and do a pre/post-rinsing weigh-in, or see if the cans list “drained”/“dry” weight like some foods have. I have a jar of kalamata olives, for instance, that gives the drained weight on the label. Beans are pretty heavy and dense, so my wild guess is that the difference won’t be as extreme as for the tomatoes. And yeah, pulykamell, I haven’t screwed up anything so far and can usually eyeball stuff, but I’m a bit of a science geek and like figuring this stuff out. 
I was an eager convert to baking via weight.
My main point is that I just wish there were more cookbooks out there - as I do find various “natural” cookbooks that list things like “one 16 oz can of black beans, drained, or (X) cups/ounces of cooked black beans” - which gave alternates if you’re not using canned and another variation on the ingredient can be used.
nm
I do agree that baking by weight is great, and I far prefer it. I use bakers percentages and all that, and when I make sausage, I have a similar system for consistency and easy scalability.
That said, for most recipes, it’s just not that hard and fast. The recipes themselves are pretty much just ballpark figures. If chickpeas came in 16 oz cans, then that recipe would probably be exactly the same, except with 16 oz of chickpeas. Most cooking does not need that level of precision, and you can tell especially since most recipes are not written by weight. I mean, what’s a “large onion”? Or even a cup of diced onion? Depending on how finely you dice it, you will get different amounts. The measurements are, in general, simply not that precise.
Thanks. Copied and pasted into my recipe file.
So is an omlette just scrambled eggs with other stuff mixed in?