104 Part I: Eating Right with Every Bite
Measuring Up: A Guide to Measuring Common Ingredients
Common Ingredients
Maybe you remember watching Mom or Grandma making a great meal
without measuring a thing. You may have old recipes that call for a “handful”
or a “chunk” of a food instead of today’s recipes that have more precise
measurements. Well, Mom and Grandma may not have measured, but after a
lot of years of cooking they just knew how much a cup or 4 ounces were by
eyeballing the amount.
We still recommend using the proper utensils to get the amounts in a recipe
correct. If you’re baking, a little more or less of an ingredient can really make
the difference between success and failure of the end product. In cooking, the
dish may still turn out okay, but the taste may be changed.
Use your measuring spoons to measure out small amounts of liquids, such
as oils, and dry foods, like seasonings. Too much or too little will really make
a difference in the finished food. Don’t measure over the bowl or the pot,
because if you accidentally overpour, you’re stuck. You usually can’t get it out
after you’ve put it in! Measurements are level on the top, not heaping. Heaping
measures can be double the amount you want, and more is not always better.
The recipes in this book use United States customary units for measurements.
See the Appendix for metric conversions.
Measuring weight versus volume
One thing that gets folks confused with measuring is weight and volume. All
ounces are not equal. Fluid ounces measure liquids like broth, water, milk,
or oil. Other ounces measure the weight of solid foods like chicken, flour, or
cheese. This may seem puzzling, so check out the following examples:
✓^1 ⁄ 4 cup of vegetable oil measures 2 fluid ounces (liquid) but weighs 1^1 ⁄ 2
ounces.
✓^1 ⁄ 2 cup of shredded cheese also weighs 2 ounces (dry), not four ounces as
you may think because of the previous example.
✓^1 ⁄ 2 cup of puffed rice cereal measures the same volume as^1 ⁄ 2 cup of peanut
butter, but they don’t weigh the same!
When you’re reading a recipe:
✓ If the ingredient is a solid food, like pasta or meat, and the amount is in
ounces, it is weight. Time to get out the food scale.
