35g of garlic and other irritating and useless weights and measures

[zanz1bar]

My garlic comes in a bulb and my scales have only little, little, little lines and no numbers until 100g so why ask for35g of garlic in a recipe?

Or 15g of coco..... WTF. Why not just one round tablespoon, I am not going to try and measure out 15g on my ancient scales.

My thanks to Rick Stein and Nigella for those helpful measures.

35g ? thats a whole (big) bulb!

60g of golden syrup. and syrup is VERY difficult to adjust if you put too much in the scales.

pffffffft

we were making nigella biscuits today from how to eat. Is there some kind of weird 'international market' thing going on? Like, cups/oz/g

(The biscuit dough was more like cake batter so is in the fridge firming up and we'll see if it's rollable tomorrow)

I can't remember the recipe but X grams of yoghurt! Yoghurt comes in millitres (sp?) not grams.

Hairy Bikers Mum's Know Best Angel Cakes recipe requires 125g egg!

My personal hate is the guideline on how much salt children should (not) have, in grams. What does 5g of salt look like? It's all very well for looking at ready meals labels, but no bloody good for cooking at home. (Unless you are a drug dealer familiar with measuring certain types of powders in small weights ... Not that I know anything about that kind of things.)

Yes, and Nigella often does bizarre quantities of ingredients that bear no relation to how they are sold commonly in packets. For instance for virtually every recipe she has ever done using chocolate, it's something like 325g or 125g when choc usually comes in 100g packets so you end up with three quarters of a packet left ( that you then end up eating or a dribble of buttermilk left in the pot that is no earthly use for anything else. Sigh. This is one of the reasons i have given up her cake recipes - they are just generally badly written, often have bits missing and I've been caught out too many times by the finished quantities/cooking times not working. Savoury recipes better, as less critical.

I so agree, I think the problem is that the receipes are converted from commercial kitchen measures to domestic (halfed I expect) and this is why I like the tried and tested receipes - ie Goodfood, good housekeeping etc.

Because I stated making bread I had to go out and buy a good electronic weighing scales that measure 1g. Its brill it converts g/oz/fluids. excellent investment around £30.

Scuttlebutter - i wouldnt worry about being a bit out with mesurements ie 100g (when 125g listed) pack of chocolate is fine, professional cooks buy their chocolate in bags (comes in coins)and not bars hence they take no notice of the supermarket portions. Its never worth the extra expence or waste and it didnt make a difference IMO. Its like sugar I take 50g off as I dont like too sweet, its never made an once of difference. If you see a good chef making cakes they hardly measure so I dont think its that ctitical.

15g coco = 3 level tablespoons (do dessert spoons)

35g garlic is about half a whole medium bulb

Once I've collected all these measurements I write them down and stick them inside the cupbd door.

Which kitchen scales have you got Bacon

Salter 1060 but I think all good electronic weighing scales are similar. I found it on-line by google there are specific weighing scale sites. I find life a lot easier with it and so glad I paid a bit more for an electr4onic one. Watch the batteries the ones you are given are useless so buy a pack of quality batteries for replacement.

35g garlic? I need to know what recipe this is for. Never again will DH complain that I use too much garlic.

Rick stein Far Eastern Odyssey Page 266
Beef Shatkora

tastes fantastic but also includes Grapefruit and Tomato Ketchup. Just Had to try it with an ingredient list like that.

That sounds fascinating. I will have to check the library. Thank you.