The Daily Grind, Chop and Fry

Step into a professional kitchen in full swing, and you won’t see much that resembles your home cooking when it comes to how ingredients are portioned and measured. Partly this is due to scale – obviously if you are making a salad dressing for 90 salads your units of measurement are going to be different than if you are making something for a family of 5. Also, experienced chefs have a weird combination of a need for precision (every dish needs to be the same for every diner, every night) and the ability to make those dishes practically in their sleep, making measuring things like garlic, seasonings and the wine for deglazing the pan unnecessary.

With bakers, it is another story. They might have the recipes memorized, but most of them still have to measure. Baking is as much science as it is art, and they don’t count eggs, they weigh them. (I don’t bake much any more, I get enough calories in my regular cooking, thanks.) But even for us regular, non-baking cooks, stepping up our measuring habits in the kitchen and picking up a few fairly inexpensive tools can make our lives a little more pleasant.

An early purchase of mine was a kitchen scale. After some dithering at the store, I got a simple, manual model that I’ve been happy with for ten years. The thing I like best about the scale is that I can put one bowl on it and often measure everything in that one bowl.

Another time saver I’m glad I got was a shot glass. It has the markings for most units of measurement right on it, and you can measure small quantities of soy sauce and vinegar, for example, in one go, without dirtying multiple spoons.

One really handy thing to have is a kitchen conversion chart taped to the inside of a cupboard door to use for converting things like liquid teaspoons into ounces, or ounces into grams. I ended up making one that I feel is perfect – you can download either the PDF or Word document here.

The other measuring essential I think we should adopt from the pros is measuring scoops, as opposed to cups. This might be just a matter of my own preference, but I have found that when baking, in particular, they are quicker to use partly because they are easier to tip over the container when you are leveling the top off, and they go in more easily – you don’t need to knock them around inside the container to get the excess off before pulling them out. Does that make sense? And my scoops, the set I have with my baking things, have spoon measures on the handles. Hey, handy!

Every year new gadgets come out – some are good, most useless. Occasionally it is good to look them over – that glass bowl with the measuring marks on it might be just the thing you’ll use every day.