Thank you in advance
I am sure this has been covered before, but does anyone know where to buy US measuring spoons and measuring cups? I have my own supply but a new arrival is looking for some of her own.
measuring cups, you can find in large migros at home supplies at the bakery section supplies...it mighty be tricky to find but if you look carefully youll spot it
Measuring cups can be found in Coop City, measuring spoons, no idea...
They are there as well.
Also, Manor, Globus & Ikea all carry them as well as most of the kitchen goods stores. You just have to look carefully or ask for them. They probably don't carry huge quantities of them so they might be out of stock.
If you go to American Food Avenue’s website www.afoodave.ch and look under baking products for baking tools they have Grip Ez spoons, scoops and cups sets. I assume these will be US rather than UK/European sizes as they’re suppling American goods mostly.
The difference between the US & UK measuring spoons & cups is so minimal I don't think it will make a difference. The volume measure already leaves room for quite a lot of variation.
Having said that, the ones at the link you posted look quite good for not too bad a price. If it's not urgent it might actually be worth ordering those so as not to run around to all the stores.
I'm actually feeling tempted to buy those myself...... (help! save me! hide the credit card. don't need more stuff)
I think the key is consistency.. especially in American baking, everything is done in cups; so if you use the same set for everything, then the quantity will be right.
Too true, gourmet. I always work on the same assumption, whether I’m using metric, UK or US measurements. So long as you use the same measure throughout it shouldn’t affect the dish.
Actually, with cups it's a 20% difference! (UK are 20% larger than US).
However, US fluid ounces are 4% larger than UK ones, so pretty minimal for spoons.
And of course, there are also metric cups and spoons!
Tom
P.S. The 20% difference comes from the fact that UK measures have 25% more units (20 ounces per pint vs. 16), but the units are 4% smaller.
Isn't it about time that America embraced it's inner commie & started using metric as well?
Clearly when baking, going by weight is best. But what do Continental Metric People do when they need a 1/4 teaspoon of something? I doubt many people have a calibrated Mettler scale reading in .001 grams?
Actually, a metric teaspoon is 1.25ml.
And I have metric spoons.
Worst thing with going by weight is, while I use a digital scale, my wife prefers to use one of those multi-scale beakers (the ones with a scale for ml, grams of flour, grams of sugar, grams or rice, etc.)
Tom
Q: How many Americans does it take to understand the metric system?
A: I dunno, but it's more than 310 million.
(I say this as a feet-inches-gallons loving American )
The density of fluids generally doesn't vary that much from water. So just using a 1 g/cc conversion should be ok.
They would simply use a quarter of their teaspoon as a measure. Continental recipes will be geared for Continental measures so a quarter of a teaspoon is a quarter of a teaspoon to them.
It’s when you’re like us with recipes in US, UK and metric that things get confusing. I’m lucky in that I have UK cup and spoon sets which give both UK and metric measures if I need them. Never use the metric ones much though as where my recipes give UK and metric measures I usually stick with the UK one. But my bread making book is in metric so when I use a recipe from that, then the metric measures are used.
We tried that back in the '70,s but it was too confusing for all of those south of the Mason - Dixon line.
bloody rebs
I hate those damn things and somehow ours accidentally broke about a month ago.. shattered in millions and millions of tiny pieces on the kitchen floor ... oops, sorry about that honey.
The solution is easy. Print off recipe. Convert quantities to favourite system, write them on the recipe. Cook. Eat. Yum.
Or do what I do. If the recipe says "cups", ignore it and use a metric one.
Ah- didn't think of metric spoons. Genius!
I'm surprised at how poor Europeans are with fractions. Yanks (and Brits I guess) grow up thinking in fractions, here not so much.
As a machinist I got used to working in both inch and metric. Could take a metric print and work on an inch machine (or vice-versa) and do the conversion in my head after a while. There's one machining operation that requires the use of fractions to set up the machine; I've watched several machinists here pulling their hair out trying to do the setup (it's not something you do every day), showed them how to do it with fractions, they looked at me like I just spoke Martian, did it their way, killed the part. Each time.
Therefore Yanks win. Again.
If you don’t have the right cup size, then yes use the metric. That’s easiest.
A friend of mine has a box full of his Uncle's old Road & Track magazines from the 50's & 60's & I read a hilarious letter in a 1963 edition of the magazine.
In response to the editor's call for the US to move towards adopting metric, the writer lambasted the magazine for having the wool pulled over it's eyes & pandering to "Communist Europe" and that the call for metric was a covert propaganda operation being implemented by Soviet agents.
The metric system failed in the US because of complaints from manufacturers who would have had to bear the cost of redesign and retooling. As globalization was not so extensive in the '70s, there was no political will to buck the moneyed interests and force the issue forward.