Archive for the ‘Home Appliances’ Category
Scales in cooking and baking
While most American kitchens have a set of measuring cups and measuring spoons of various sizes, most still do not own a kitchen scale for cooking and baking. Food scales are available online and in most kitchen and bath stores for as little as $10 or as much as $300. Once you have used a kitchen scale regularly, you will find that it makes your cooking and baking easier and faster. As Alton Brown would say – a kitchen scale is a great multitasker!
Baking is truly a science. Most cookbooks, pastry chefs and other experts on the subject will tell anyone that baking is a balancing act against acids and bases. It’s a game of precise measurements, temperatures and methods. A kitchen scale is an important tool to a baker in helping with these delicate balances. It can help you ensure that each time you make a recipe the proportions are EXACTLY the same. The benefit that the kitchen scale can provide is precision. Precision defines how repeatable a measurement is. A measuring cup is accurate, but not precise. For example, one cup of flour can weight between 4 and 6 ounces. Each time you measure the cup of flour in a measuring cup the measurement depends on the amount of flour packed in the cup, how it was placed in the cup, whether it has been recently sifted to add air etc. Sometimes it might be 4 ounces and sometimes it might be 5 or even 6. However, if you measure it by weight on a scale, it is absolutely going to be the same precise amount of flour every time you use it. If a recipe calls for 4 cups of flour and you’re just using a measuring cup, you could measure between 16 and 24 ounces. This is a huge difference! If you use a scale, you know that you will get the same amount each time you make the recipe.
Another benefit to using a scale is faster measurement. No reason to drag out all the measuring cups and spoons. Simply place a bowl in the scale, zero out the bowls weight and add the first ingredient. You can zero out the weight each time you add a new ingredient so you don’t even have to change bowls. It saves time in clean up and in prep.
Although, a lot of people realize that a scale would certainly make baking more precise they don’t realize how much it actually helps in correct measurements and proportions in cooking as well. It can help with recipes that call for a pound of ground beef or a ½ pound of carrots. You can now get these measurements exactly right each time.
Kitchen scales can also help you with proportion sizes. If you are trying to lose weight, you can measure out your food prior to eating to know exactly how much you are eating. It is also helpful if you need to track the amount of protein and/or vegetables and fruit you are eating each day or at each meal.