Cooking Measurement Confuses The Cook

How easy it is if everyone used the same cooking measurement when writing down the instructions. It would save a lot of time in trying to decipher the actual meaning and save a lot of effort that would otherwise end up in frustration. Isn’t it easy to just say that the recipe called for cooking measurement such as one sixth of a cup instead of two tablespoons plus two teaspoons and a half!

Even with the most sophisticated measuring devices, you will inevitably hear the familiar pinch and the dash being used to describe amounts having less than one eighth of a teaspoon dry and a dash being somewhere between three drops and one fourth of a teaspoon of liquid. With specific cooking measurement guideline, it is easy for any beginner to make some tasty food.

When you do a lot of cooking from recipes, it helps having a conversion table from the US Dairy Association, Nutrient Data Laboratory to insure you are using the correct amount of each ingredient. This source offers US to metric conversions in case you are using a foreign cookbook and need to make exact cooking measurement.

Ands yet even with the most foolproof measuring standard, they can still cause some consternation among cooks, such as the number of eggs. The size of an egg may compromise the integrity of a recipe, for example if it calls for two eggs and all you have are really small eggs, they may only equal one extra large egg.

The same goes when you are making gravy and the recipe calls for cornstarch to thicken the liquid and yet all you have is flour. Do you know that it will take two tablespoons of flour to replace one tablespoon of cornstarch for thickening? Knowing exact measurements can save time going by trial and error. One helpful cooking measurement tip to know is that three tablespoons of cocoa plus one tablespoon of butter is equal to one square of chocolate.

Cooking measurement is used as recipes are twisted and changed over the years and yet, as long as the original ingredients are used, with slight variations in amounts the finished product will at least be close to the original.

February 20 2007 04:28 am Del.icio.us Digg Furl