I didn’t manage to get my hands on my own kitchen scale until this past Christmas. But oh, how nice it is to have. For about $20, you can have a gadget that will help you extend your leftovers, make recipes more accurately, and even serve as a postal scale.
One of the most important things you can do to become a good cook is follow recipes carefully. That means measuring and timing correctly. Sometimes, though, measuring can be tricky. I know many people are tempted to just guess, and sometimes you can get away with it. But people often wonder how my cooking comes out consistently so well, and there’s one thing that’s probably responsible for 75% of my consistency and quality: follow the recipe. Don’t guess. (The other 25% is I fail out of view. Kitchen disasters and bad recipes are part of cooking, so I pre-test recipes before I serve them to guests. : ) )
How many times have you come across a recipe that asks for 8 0z. pasta? How do you tell accurately how much 8 oz. pasta is? The kitchen scale is how. What about when you need a half-bag of frozen peas, but you’ve already used some of the peas out of the bag? Well, you know how much was in the bag originally. You can divide that number by two and then weigh it out. Miraculous.
True pastry chefs don’t even use cups and spoons to measure their ingredients because the density and wetness of ingredients can vary. Should you get your hands on a recipe for something whose ingredients are only measured in weights, this is what you need.
The most important thing to know about using a kitchen scale is what “tare” or “taring” is. That basically means you zero out the scale. Sometimes, when you’re measuring pasta, lentils, etc., you can’t just put them directly on the scale. In those cases, put a small plastic container (tupperware works great — ceramic bowls do not) on the scale, then hold down the “on” button or “tare” button. That will zero your scale with the bowl on it and you can now measure your little heart out.
