Comments by "GH1618" (@GH-oi2jf) on "The argument for cooking with volume measurements, rather than weight" video.

  1. Not really. My whole life has been devoted to science and engineering, but I approach cooking as an art. It isn’t a black art — there are aspects which are knowable and which must be learned, but I’m not obsessive about the science of cooking as so many seem to be these days. The worst are those who stress about the seasoning on their cast iron pan or are into sous vide.
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  2. Exactly (ironically)!
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  3. Four oz (1/4 lb) of baking chocolate is about 1/2 c when melted. It would be helpful it the package gave the conversion.
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  4. Scooping carefully should result in “lightly packed” flour. The important thing is to use consistent technique. That’s difficult when you have a teammate. It’s a case of too many cooks spoil the soup.
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  5. Cheap measuring cups can be inaccurate. What do you mean they were “correct” where you bought them? How did you check them? I think you would need a graduated cylinder to check them with precision. Or you could use a scale to weigh water put into them, but the scale would need to be calibrated.
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  6. His videos are stitched together from many pieces.
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  7. Yes, but does any kitchen scale give you Newtons? If you calibrate your gram scale for local gravity with a known mass, then you get the right result using grams.
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  8. A quarter tsp of Morton Kosher salt is one g.
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  9. A stick of butter (1/4 lb) is half a cup. A stick is marked into eight tablespoons, so it is just one stick plus two tablespoons. You just cut a stick at a mark; you don’t use a spoon or a cup. The US system of cooking is actually easy to use, but of course the butter must be packaged according to the conventions of the system.
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  10. It’s true everywhere that an experienced cook knows what a dough or batter should feel like.
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  11. A US kitchen needs a glass measuring cup with a pouring spout for liquids. I have two, one cup and one pint. Dry ingredients are measured with the set of nested cups. Sometimes the smaller measuring cups will be used for liquid, but one always measures flour first. Managing this problem is not difficult.
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  12. A gram is not always a gram if your scale is not calibrated or if it has trouble weighing small quantities.
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  13. For some reason, cups are more a US thing, or perhaps a North American thing. What would normally be used in the UK by cooks who use Imperial units?
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  14. The grain is too small. A tenth of an ounce is just under three grams, which seems about right to me, but there’s nothing wrong (in my opinion) with using grams for small quantities of ingredients, while using oz for larger amounts. One gram is 1/4 tsp of Morton Coarse Kosher Salt.
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  15. No. Both US Customary and metric units are legal for trade in the United States. Our Customary units are defined in terms of metric units. That does not mean we are “on the metric system,” which doesn’t mean anything. The manner in which our Customary units are defined has nothing to do with the question of which units should be used for cooking, which is the subject of this video.
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  16. If he were actually baking something, instead of demonstrating, he would have been more careful. A cook, using one particular flour and consistent technique, can achieve useful consistency. And, of course, a batter can be adjusted to get the right result. Any good cook uses the character of the batter or dough as the test.
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  17. Food is neutral with respect to salt when it matches normal salinity of body fluids. Normal is 9g/l. Much less than that and your soup will taste “flat.” Much more and it will taste salty. You need salt but don’t want it to taste salty.
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  18. Flour can be different also. Julia Child wrote about this problem when translating French recipes for US kitchens.
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  19. You need to give a specific example. Some recipes are better than others, but no recipe would call for measuring a cup of whole carrots. They would be chopped, and likely the dice size wouldn’t matter because the amount is not critical.
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  20. That’s the worst thing (in recipes, I presume)? In the US, butter is typically sold in sticks of 1/4 lb (four to a package), which is 1/2 cup per stick. and the sticks are divided by markings on the wrapper into 8 tbsp. Taking a specified volume of butter is easy.
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  21. Obviously, you need to use standardized measuring tools.
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  22. That’s a good idea.
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  23. More likely, he is just clueless.
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  24. In recipes for the US, it is assumed that the cook will have a set of measuring cups. A basic set is four cups: 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1 c. An extended set might have 2/3 and 3/4 c as well. A 1/8 c is useful, but might have to be purchased separately.
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  25. In the USA, a cup of butter is two sticks. Easy when it is packaged that way.
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  26. How do you weigh honey without a cup? You don’t just pour it on the scale, do you?
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  27. A tablespoon for measuring is a defined size. The problem is that if buy a cheap set, the sizes might not be accurate.
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  28. Now that just isn’t serious.
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  29. Shredded cheese never needs to be measured with high precision.
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  30. The Imperial pint is larger than the US pint, so if your cup is also 1/2 pint, it will be larger.
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  31. One should buy one glass 2-cup measure (Anchor Hocking or Pyrex), one set of four stainless steel nested measuring cups, and one set of measuring spoons. When not in use, the SS cups and the spoons go in the glass measuring cup and sit on a shelf. I don’t know where you got the idea that you need 15 measuring spoons. You don’t.
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  32. Yes, if taken to excess.
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  33. A tsp of Morton Kosher salt is 4 grams.
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  34. Cups of butter are easy when it is packaged according to US conventions. If you try to use a US recipe in the UK, that problem is on the UK. Most US recipes will assume common US ingredients are available.
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  35. Yes, for small quantities only. A pinch of salt for my eggs. It has to be Morton Coarse Kosher salt for me, to get a consistent feel.
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  36. A measuring cup for liquids is marked for fractions of a cup. It isn’t difficult to read.
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  37. In the USA, butter is commonly packaged in 1/4 lb sticks, four to a package. One stick is half a cup. Measuring cups come in a set of different sizes. When measuring flour and sugar, you would use a smaller cup for sugar than for flour.
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  38. It would be useful if a kitchen scale had a mode for avoirdupois drams, but are there any which do?
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  39. Yes, his starting an argument about “ground” vs. “minced” was pointless. I think he just likes to be provocative to boost his numbers.
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  40. Of course baking must be more precise and French patisserie is the highest form of baking.
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  41. Weight is not necessarily precise. If your scale gives steps in grams, you cannot accurately measure weight of only a few grams. You would need one that gives tenths of grams. You also need to check the calibration.
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  42. Assuming you are not in the US, you would need to get a proper US measuring cup. Your flour is probably different as well. There is also a subjective notion of ideal portion size.
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  43. Standard practice in the US is to use level cups. For flour, the cup is filled without packing, then the excess is scraped off to make a level cup.
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  44. It’s still a useful rule of thumb in the US. I don’t think it works for the Imperial pint.
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  45. Part of learning to cook with flour is learning consistent measuring technique.
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