Accurately measuring ingredients will result in consistent recipes. Learn to choose between weight vs volume measurements for your cooking & baking.
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When it comes to cooking and baking, there are two types of measurements: weight vs volume.
Weight vs Volume Measurements
There are two ways you can measure ingredients for cooking and baking: by weight (grams, ounces, etc) or volume (cups, teaspoons, etc). You can use one or both when you’re cooking.
Measuring by Weight
Measuring ingredients by weight means using a food scale.
Personally, I measure almost everything by weight. Why? For these excellent reasons:
Fewer Dishes & Faster
I’ll put my bowl directly on the scale, hit the tare button (to set the weight to 0), and add an ingredient until I get the right weight. Hit the tare button and add the next ingredient. Repeat.
If I’m worried about adding too much, I might use two bowls. One on the scale and another that I’ll dump the weighed ingredients into. I don’t do this often.
This means I’ll have fewer dishes (because I won’t be washing all those measuring cups and spoons). It’s also faster because I’m not pouring and leveling and scraping and so on.
More Accurate & Consistent
150 grams is 150 grams. It doesn’t matter how you measure it out. Weight will always be the same.
Volume, on the other hand, can be wildly different depending on the cook, the ingredients, and the measuring methods used.
For example, a cup of AP flour will be 120 grams. But it’s so easy to measure out a volumetric cup that’s a lot more. Check out this example (I’ve started at the measuring wrong part but the whole video is worth a watch).
Using the same amount of an ingredient every time you make something means that recipe will always be the same (yaay for accuracy and consistency).
Easy Serving Size Changes
So the recipe you’re making makes 4 servings but you need to feed 6 people. That’s 1.5 times more recipe.
If you’re using weight, you just multiply all your weights by 1.5 and weigh your ingredients. Simple, 0.5 grams of cayenne pepper becomes 0.75 grams.
If you’re using volume, when you multiply by 1.5 you’re likely to end up with some odd sized measurements, like a ¼ tsp of cayenne powder becomes 0.375 of a tsp. I don’t have a measuring spoon of that size, do you?
Get a Food Scale
What are you waiting for? Grab a food scale and start making easier, more accurate, and more consistent meals.
But if I haven’t convinced you (yet), let’s talk about measuring by volume.
Measuring by Volume
Measuring ingredients by volume means using measuring cups and spoons. You’ll need two different types: wet and dry.
I use a food scale almost exclusively for the reasons listed above but there is one good reason to go with volume instead:
More Recipes
The biggest advantage (or only advantage?) of measuring by volume is the number of recipes out there that you can use.
This is the predominant measuring method in the USA so there are a million recipes online and in cookbooks that use cups and spoons for measuring.
Over the last few years I have noticed that more and more recipes are offering both volume and weight measurements but it’s not consistent.
If you don’t want to have to ever worry about converting a recipe and you only want one type of measurement, measuring by volume will give you the largest pool of recipes.
If you’re measuring by volume, there are rules for HOW to measure certain ingredients Check out Better Homes & Gardens for a basic how-to guide.
What About Ounces & Package Sizes?
Ounces are complicated because there are ounces and fluid ounces. Unfortunately, people rarely differentiate. I’m in Canada and we don’t use ounces here so I’m used to converting them but it’s annoying so I generally try and avoid new recipes that use ounces.
Most of the recipes I see using ounces are referring to a package size (and those sizes are totally different here in Canada). For example, I’ll see pumpkin puree as “15 ounce can.” Okay, that’s going to be about 450mL (it’s less than that and not so rounded but close enough for this example). The only cans of pumpkin puree I have access to are 798 mL.
Pay attention to package sizes! Learn to convert them or skip those recipes entirely.
How Do You Measure?
How do you measure things? Why? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Until next time. Xoxo