You have most likely been in a situation when you needed to measure a cooking ingredient without using a scale or measuring cup. We know that this can be a problem faced by many “chefs” That is why we came up with some ideas on how to measure without using measuring equipment in the kitchen. All you need is just a spoon or a cup. So, how can you measure without the scale?
Measuring with the spoon
Tablespoon standard size is 15 ml, however, the sizes of the tablespoons can vary: 10 ml (mainly newer European spoons), 15 ml (older European spoons, Canada, Great Britain, USA) and 20 ml (Australian spoons). Nowadays, 10 ml tablespoons are gaining popularity mostly in Europe. Teaspoons or “small” spoons usually have a volume of 4.5 – 5 ml of liquid.
Food Converter complies and converts quantities of food ingredients in terms of spoonful measurements.
Spoon sizes:
- standard (Europe, Canada, Great Britain, USA): 15 ml
- new spoons (mainly Europe): 10 ml
- Australian spoon: 20 ml
- teaspoon: 4.5 ml – 5 ml
What can influence measurements?
Measuring cooking ingredients without a scale requires some of caution and patience.
The accuracy of conversions by spoon depends on the surface (size), shape and volume of the spoon as well as the characteristics of the ingredients. Measurements can differ and vary from spoon to spoon. Food Converter calculates to/from spoonful and not to flat spoon?. Interestingly, while using different sizes of tablespoons (10 ml, 15 ml or 20 ml), the spoonful amount of food ingredients doesn’t vary a lot (you should not consider that two 10 ml tablespoons equal to one 20 ml tablespoon).
How big is my spoon?
The volume of the spoon can be simply measured by the help of a shot glass or any other bigger glass with a known volume. The most common shot glass size is 30 ml, although 20 or 40 ml are also widely used in many countries. Check here Wikipedia’s list of shot sizes by the country.
So, depending on your shot glass size – the liquid of two 15 ml tablespoons will fit in 30 ml glass, or two 10 ml spoons will fit in 20 ml shot.
Measuring with a cup
Cups in the kitchen can come in a variety of sizes, but a standard cup can hold 240 ml of liquid. In this case, the liquid is not completely filled to the edge of the cup, but slightly below (7-8 mm). When measuring dry cooking ingredients with the cup, the results can vary significantly – if we fill the cup and shake it, a bit the ingredients can collapse up to one third.
Example of measuring flour with a cup
Put the flour to the edge of the cup, shake it a bit so that the ingredient collapses and results in more flour in the cup slightly below the edge. This is how cooking conversions with a cup for Food Converter were calculated.
How big is my cup?
The easiest way you can check the size of your cup is with the 0,5 l bottle of water. Just pour the water into two (same model) size or twice into one cup. The water needs to be poured slightly below the edge (7-8 mm). So, if our cup(s) is 240 ml, a little bit of the water will stay in the bottle.
Food Converter’s cup is 240 ml.
Cup’s sizes:
- European cup = 240 ml
- US legal cup = 240 ml
- US customary cup = ½ US customary pint = 236.6 ml
- metric cup (mainly Commonwealth, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Latin America) = 250 ml
- Japanese cup = 200 ml
- imperial cup = 0.5 pint = 284 ml
Food Converter is here for you!
Food Converter provides advice on how to measure cooking ingredients without traditional measuring equipment. With the help of the Food Converter, a spoon and a cup can help you can measure the ingredients accurately and cook something delicious.