As a cook or chef, you must have at some point been boxed to a corner and ran out of options when measuring your cooking materials and ingredients, especially when you have got no scale to make use of. This can be a huge stumbling block experienced by many Chefs, hence we have been able to come up with some ideas on how to measure wet ingredients without needing a scale.

Using a measuring spoon

A standard tablespoon volume size is 15 ml, although size may differ. There are some tablespoons with a 10 ml volume capacity, these are majorly newer European spoons. The 15 ml sized tablespoons are largely older European spoons, Canadian and the USA. We also have some variants that are 20 ml from Australia. In recent times, the 10 ml tablespoons have become increasingly popular especially in Europe. For tiny measurements, teaspoons are a great option and they are usually between 4.5 ml – 5 ml in capacity.

Spoon sizes:

1. Standard (Europe, Canada, Great Britain, USA): 15 ml = 0.507 fl oz
2. New spoons (mainly Europe): 10 ml = 0.34 fl oz
3. Australian spoon: 20 ml = 0.68 fl oz
4. Teaspoon: 4.5 – 5 ml = 0.15 – 0.17 fl oz

You can find more about measuring with the spoons in Measuring Tips.

So depending on what volume of milk, water or oil you want to measure, you can choose and mix different sizes of spoons from the above options. If the ingredients in your recipe are in liters, then remember that 1000 ml equals 1 liter. So if you have to put 200 ml of milk in your pancake mix, and you want to do this without a scale or measuring cup, just make sure you have a standard spoon (most likely will be a 10 ml European spoon since it’s the most popular) take 20 scoops (10 ml spoons multiplied by 20 in 200 ml of milk).

However using spoons may take a chunk of your time if you are cooking on a large scale, so you might want to opt for a better option.

Improvising with water bottles

Instead of disposing that empty bottle of table water into the thrash, it can be used for measurement purposes when scales are not available. Most table water bottles come in different sizes and shapes, however, you should be less concerned about the shape and more concerned with the volume. You can easily figure out volumes on the table water label, they are usually in milliliters (ml) and liters. If you happen to have a small empty 500 ml table water bottle and you need to add 2 liters of milk into your mix, you know you have to pour 4 bottles of 500 ml each.

However if you have cups at your disposal, bear in mind that cups vary in volume too.

EU cup = 240 ml = 8.11 oz, metric cup = 250 ml = 8.45 oz, imperial cup (UK) = 284 ml = 9.60 oz. So be sure how much you are pouring.

Pints, ounces and gallons

Your recipes may come with ingredients that will need you to take measurements in pints, ounces, and gallons, so it’s advisable to be aware of the unit of conversion. In a pint, you have exactly 0.473176 liters, which is approximately about 0.5 L. So you should know how much water bottles to use to arrive at one point. As for gallons, every gallon is about 3.78541 in liters, approximately 3.8 liters. But you might not have the need to measure volumes as much as this, except if you intend cooking for hundreds of people. Ounces are units for weight, but there is a fluid ounce as a unit of volume, 1 US fluid ounce equals 29.57 milliliters and 1 L equals 33.914 fl oz.

Liquid & wet cooking ingredients conversions

Liquid conversions from mililiters (liters) to cups, spoons, fluid ounces, pints and gallons for wet & volume cooking ingreedients – milk, water, oil.