Keeping to the shallow end of the pool for a second post, we’re now going to talk about measuring things.
Once again, I really need to step up my follow-through when it comes to celebrity endorsements.
Here to talk to you all about what is possibly the most important measurement in cooking, all the way from Gallifrey, give him a big hand folks, it’s the Doctor!
Okay, if the Doctor were here, he’d be telling you about Time. Time and temperature are the most important measurements in your kitchen. Forget for now about cups and tablespoons and liters—we’ll get to those later.
When you cook, you are the master of time and temperature. You measure them carefully and orchestrate all the food around them so that in the end everything is perfectly cooked. The tricky bit is that every food item has different desires for how it wants to dance with time and temperature. A stir-fry wants to mosh with temperature but leave time standing woefully at the bar crying into its lager. A roast chicken does a sultry tango with time but is shy around temperature, flirting bashfully. You get the idea of this very labored metaphor, I hope.
Combining ingredients when you cook (and I am a big, big fan of one-pot/pan meals, so expect a lot of that from me) means taking the individual time and temperature needs of all the ingredients into account. (Even when cooking separate dishes, timing them so they are all finished at the same time and one thing isn’t left sitting cold while another is still cooking takes practice and attention to time.) Let’s consider an example…
Lentils together with rice are thought to present a complete protein for vegetarians. When you go to the store, you might see two kinds of lentils (brown and red) and two kinds of rice (white and brown). Temperature wise, they are all fairly compatible. Rice likes low temperatures (and a well-sealed lid) so that it can steam. Lentils are fine with somewhat higher temperatures and more vigorous cooking, but are happy hanging out with rice and cooking the way rice prefers.
Time-wise, however, there are problems.
Who am I to stand in the way of pure legume/grain love of this sort?
White rice takes about 20 minutes to cook, while brown rice takes upwards of 40. Meanwhile, red lentils are done in 15-20 minutes while brown lentils need 30-45 minutes at least. The solution here is clear: if you want to throw some lentils in with your rice in order to punch up the protein, combine red lentils with white rice and brown lentils with brown rice. Putting the brown lentils with the white rice will lead either to crunchy lentils after 20 minutes or mushy, overcooked rice after 40 minutes.
Likewise when you assemble a stir-fry, consider the needs of all of the ingredients separately. If you put everything into the hot pan at once, you may wind up with the things that take longer to cook still being mostly raw, or, conversely, the things that cook very quickly will be overdone. Frying a stir-fry is like being that guy in the airplane who directs all the parachuters when to jump out. “Now you! Okay, now you! You’re up next! Go, go, go!”
It totally looks exactly like this when I cook.
What I’m saying is not that you need to have a dozen egg-timers sitting around your kitchen (just use the timer or clock on your stove or phone) but that you should be aware of what the temperature and time needs are of all your ingredients, and of what the current temperature and cooking time of your dish is. When I give recipes, I’ll tell you all about the individual ingredients and their relationship to both time and temperature.
Now, on to the much more fiddly, irritating units of measurement: weight and volume.
So, how important are precise measurements anyway?
In cooking that does not involve baking pastries and bread, not very. By this I don’t mean that you can just willy-nilly toss ingredients around, but I do mean that you need not get out your scanning electron microscope to make sure that your cup of broth has exactly the right number of molecules. As you get more comfortable in the kitchen, you’ll probably find yourself eschewing measurement for most ingredients entirely and just eyeballing it.
I’m US American, so I use American weights and measures, but we’ll also discuss metric (and I’ll give metric measures for all recipes). In the US, weight is measured in ounces (oz.) and pounds (lb).
Volume is measured in quarts (qt.), pints (pt.) cups (c.), teaspoons (t.), tablespoons (tbl.) and—just to make things interesting—ounces. Yes, ounces again. When measuring volume, technically an ounce is called a “fluid ounce” (fl. oz.) but when people actually write recipes they very rarely specify that. For things that can’t easily be stuck inside a measuring cup, if someone refers to ounces, they’re probably talking about weight. If I see a recipe that calls for 1 oz of sliced cheese, I get my kitchen scale out because no one is sticking sliced cheese in a measuring cup.
The most important things to be able to measure for the American cook are mainly cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. I’m always frustrated when I come across recipes that call for a quart or pint of something that does not actually come from the store in quart or pint quantities. I have to then go google “How many cups are in a quart?” Which reminds me that, when it comes to measurement conversions, Google always has the answers. If something calls for ounces of something and you want to know how many cups that is equivalent to, google it. There’s no shame in that. I do it all the time.
You don't even need to press "enter" to get the answer!
There’s also this thing called “a pinch” which is maddeningly imprecise. A pinch is what you can hold between the finger pads of your thumb and index finger. Rest assured, anything measured in “pinches” is really not that important to the overall success of the recipe. If it were, they would have given a more precise measurement.
The metric system is infinitely more logical than the US standard of weights and measures. It’s based on units of ten and if you live in a metric system country (i.e., most of the rest of the world), then you already basically know how it works. Volume is measured in liters (in the kitchen you’ll be working with milliliters mostly) and weight in grams. One milliliter (mL) is one thousandth of a liter (L), one milligram (mg) is one thousandth of a gram (g). Because it makes so much more sense, there’s a lot less to say about it! Some countries are still in a bit of a hybrid state, using both cups and tablespoons and milliliters and grams.
Some very fussy cooks are all about weight measurements instead of volume. Weight is a more precise measure because volume can differ slightly (for dry ingredients primarily) depending on how packed in to the measuring cup the, say, flour is. Bakers especially tend to measure everything in weight because even tiny fluctuations in liquid/fat/dry ratios can adversely effect the finished product. (Why I don’t bake, ladies and gentlemen.) Converting weight to volume will differ depending on the ingredient. I shop at a store with a bulk section and I always see people getting the vapors over the fact that a pound of dried parsley (which is the price written on the outside of the jar) costs like $40. Meanwhile, a pound of flour is $1.20. Is parsley made of gold? No, it’s just really light. A pound of parsley is nearly a garbage bag full. The amount that people normally buy to refill their empty spice jar costs about $0.50. Meanwhile, a pound of flour is about 4-5 cups, enough to bake a couple small loaves of bread. So, if you’re going to ask Google to help you convert a weight measurement into volume, you have to also tell it what specifically you are talking about.
To be honest, though, when I encounter a recipe where someone is insisting I use weight measures, I find another recipe instead. I do have a kitchen scale, but come on.
