How do you prefer to measure?

Whistling_Gypsy

I use whatever comes first in the recipe, be it ounces, grammes or cups.

I used to prefer ounces, no competition - but find grammes so much more accurate now. I weigh almost everything I eat (yep, diet ) and often weigh in increments of say, 5 grammes - fairly hard to work out in fractions of ounces!! This has spilled over to my baking now too.

Cups I use if the recipe is in cups - but like zippychick says, is it packed or loose? Do you dip or pour? And aren't Australian cups different from US cups? I understand when they say use any cup, so long as you are consistent - but what if there is egg involved? Just too many variables for my liking.

No, I don't over analyse either....

liz545

I only really properly measure ingredients if I'm baking, because most of my day-to-day cookery is improvised rather than following a recipe. When baking, I use metric unless the recipe's American, and I'm happy to use cups or baker's percentages. I have a couple of sets of cup measurements, and once you adjust to the fact that the recipe is in fact a formula for the proportion of flour to fat/sugar/liquids it actually becomes quite convenient and easy to scale up or down as needed.

bexta

Hi, I being an (over here) Aussie, the 'cups' over there are the same as US ones, same with tsp, tbsp. I much prefer metric, or the dreaded cups. I guess it's what you know and feel comfortable with. I was only taught metric at at school, so imperial is hard for me to visualise, if that makes sense. I can tell 'oh yeah that's about 50g sugar', but not 'oh that's x oz flour'. I've got scales that say both though, which is handy.

Whistling_Gypsy

Wikipedia suggests they are different - though I bow to your superior knowledge as bona fide Aussie!!!

Not the first time Wiki has been wrong - nor shall it be the last, I imagine:rotfl::rotfl:

Frugalista

Pounds and ounces for me - although I can (and do) do metric or cups if the recipe comes like that.

Olliebeak

I'm a lbs/ozs gal - comes from being a 'woman of a certain age' I guess .

Prefer pt/fl.ozs to litres/mls - but my measuring jugs do both.

I will do kg/gms as a last resort, but they're a bit harder to read on my scales.

Only time I use my cup measures is for Porridge - because I've also heard that there's a difference between UK/US cup measures.

The spoon ones come in handy regularly - just not completely convinced that the tblsp one is spot-on accurate though.

Paulie'sGirl

Hi,

Being a younger member of the OS flock I prefer metric for most things, but am fully conversant with imperial. I too loathe the American cup system. I know it makes more sense for baking (its essentially a volumetric system, which makes scaling easier, as you just maintain the ratios) but I just dislike it. I'm a chemist (industrial, not pharmacist) by training and I like our ways better

That said, I can't do weather temperatures in celsius, I'm a fahrenheit girl - but I can only do oven temps in celsius. Bizarre I know!! If I had a gas oven or a range I think I'd die!!

PGxx

daska

I think it depends on what I'm cooking. I use imperial, metric, cups and my own personal favourite 'cans' (i.e. 1 can this, 2 cans that, 1 can something else, a packet of something dried and 4 cans of water makes 'yummy soup').

Have to say I don't like cups over much but that's really because of the tendency for recipes that use cups to also use numbers of items without specifying - when it's a brand you can't identify it's difficult to work out exactly what is required. Even with weetabix cake there's quite a difference in weight/density between a pukka weetabix and the myriad own brands. And it's also not unknown for manufacturers to change the item (e.g. the new smaller bars need less liquid to make work, rest and play sauce)

Butterfly_Brain

Lbs and ounces for me but I have used cups for American recipes. I can't get on with metric old fogey that I am
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

I bake bread with a pound of flour, 5g (mentally - it's a teaspoon) of salt, yeast and sugar, either half a pint or my 250ml teacup plus a slosh more of water and a glug (if measured it would be my 1954 made in Sheffield tablespoon that DD2 uses to make cookies) of oil. And they go into a gas mark oven for x minutes, with a 2lb loaf tin filled with about half a litre of water to give it a nice crust.

But Greek recipes are done using a small glass. Even though it's the same capacity as the teacup, for some reason, the Greek recipes have to be in glasses.

A total jumble, in other words.

Oh, and if I have to measure something, it usually comes out as 12-inches-300-mil. Unless it's over a metre, and then it's usually 3-foot-3-plus-x-mil.

Spanners are in mil, unless they're half inch or the-one-the-thickness-of-my-thumb.

If it's hot outside, it's in the 70s. If it's cold, it's minus 3. If it's so-so, it comes out as 16°C-61F. But temperature increases tend to slip out in Kelvin. 'give the jam another 10K and it'll probably reach setting point'

Probably something to do with being the offspring of the 1970s. And a sciency person.

And my scales are from an old fashioned shop - balance ones, the weights are only in Imperial - but as there is no 1oz weight, this job is done by 4 X 2p pieces (additional 2 pences used in the event of requiring one and a half ounces of something)

Yes, I am a nightmare. But I also have the dubious achievement of asking ex if the reason his homemade central heating was leaking everywhere was due to his mixing metric radiators with imperial pipes 'as the difference is x mil...'. got cut off with a blunt 'don't be so stupid, that's not what it is, it's the faulty radiators'. DD2 reported the following day that he had spent the weekend replacing things 'because the pipes were in a different type of measurement to the radiators'