this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
197 points (90.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36179 readers
792 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Used a couple of US recipes recently and most of the ingredients are in cups, or spoons, not by weight. This is a nightmare to convert. Do Americans not own scales or something? What's the reason for measuring everything by volume?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It's close enough for home cooking, the specific gravity of milk is around 1030g/L so unless your recipe calls for multiple liters of Milk the small difference isn't going to affect the result.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's close enough for home cooking

And now you are getting to the reason why American use volume for recipes. If I don't need the precision of mass for recipes as it won't appreciably affect the taste, then why break out the scale?

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Because the difference between packing a cup of flour and not packing a cup of flour is as much as 30%

https://www.loveandoliveoil.com/2020/01/weight-vs-volume-measurements-in-baking-and-the-best-way-to-measure-flour.html#:~:text=So%20depending%20on%20how%20you,of%20150%20grams%20(!!)

It doesn't really matter for liquids, but dry ingredients are a whole other ballgame when it comes to this mess.

[–] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It’s really mainly only flour though, because can be compacted, most of the things that you’re using in the kitchen like baking powder or sugar aren’t going to be compacted to any appreciable level.

For flour, you pour it into your measuring cup and then run the spine of a knife or something over it to get rid of the excess flour and get a level cup

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

There are many of other things that can be compacted or have different volume to weight ratios.

Corn starch is like flour, you can pack it down.

Salt (Table vs Kosher) Kosher salt has about half the volume to weight as table salt.

Shredded Cheese (this one always bugs me. Is it 3 cups after shredding, or before... how packed in should it be), etc.

[–] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 3 points 8 months ago

Also, the proper amount of shredded cheese is the container.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 points 8 months ago

A lot of volumetric baking recipes tell you to run the grain through a sieve to remove clumps, this generally standardizes the density well enough.

Salt is usually assumed to be table salt unless noted in the recipe. Even then, most recipes have a point to them where they tell you to taste the food and add salt to taste as necessary.

What are you cooking with shredded cheese where the ratio is that important?

[–] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Are you measuring cornstarch?

Maybe I just have weird cornstarch but anytime I try to actively scoop out of it, it’s like trying to scoop baking powder.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I use it frequently in coatings for Japanese deep fried foods, usually mixed with flour and salt in particular ratios.

[–] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 2 points 8 months ago

I usually just eyeball stuff like that

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

In my other responses, I've noted that I don't bake. In other people's responses, they've noted that there are still a lot of baking recipes out there that don't require precision.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

Precision in baking is massively overstated. The earliest recipes are in parts if you're lucky. More likely they are mix in these ingredients until it looks right.

[–] SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world -1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Elevation changes everything though and if you don’t adjust the measurements change more.

If you’re at sea level, sure.