MEASURING CUPS AND SPOONS

Cups, spoons, teaspoons ... Undoubtedly the time has come to clarify what kind of measures I usually use in the kitchen, many readers of the blog have asked me about it and you deserve an explanation.

 

The spoons and cups are the reference measurements in England and the United States.

 

To begin with, I want to tell you that when I started cooking, being a great inexperienced, I used to prepare the recipes by eye, or with improvised homemade measures, like "a glass" or "a cup", leaving in the background what type of glass or what kind of mug.

You can imagine how good everything went, but little by little I was learning to organize myself and prepare in advance the ingredients I needed for a specific recipe. In this I am self-taught, so it took me a while.

At first I got a measuring cup and a scale, these two objects allowed me to measure, by volume and weight respectively, and they supposed without a doubt a great improvement.

I wrote down the amounts of everything I was using to prepare each dish, I started creating my recipe file, and one fine day, by chance I discovered the Anglo-Saxon measures.

 

In Spain we work by weighing the ingredients, especially in baking, go over to the measuring spoons, guaranteed comfort.

 

I had been reading American cooking blogs and websites for a long time, including some English ones, at first, every time I read "cup", I thought ... "cup", but as I told you before, I did not pay attention to what kind of cup, I read "tablespoon "And I thought ..." spoonful ", but did not know if it is a soup, dessert, or coffee.

Soon I realized that all that did not make sense and I started to investigate, and I quickly realized that it was a measurement system that was used in baking and many other recipes throughout the Anglo-Saxon world, I saw how comfortable I was and I knew I could not continue cooking without them.

 

 

I had to get a set of measuring cups and spoons, at that time they still could not be found easily in Spain, at least in my area, (surely in specialized stores in large capitals yes), so I waited for my next trip to the US and I bought them, both there and in England are the most common.

If you had not traveled the easiest thing would have been to buy them online, now in Spain you can find them in the homeware section of many stores and they do not entail any large outlay.

 

The measuring spoons allow you to cook accurately without the need for scales or other more complex instruments.

 

Today I have several sets of measuring cups and spoons, I have been buying them in different trips and I even bought a game in Ikea, they are spoons and stainless steel cups whose capacities are not exactly the same, they are adapted to the European metric system , but they do the same function.

You may find all this interesting, but still experience some confusion, to clarify things, you can see below the volume equivalences, for liquid ingredients.

 

Spoons (Tbsp) and teaspoons (Tsp):

1 / 4 Tsp	1,25ml
1 / 2 Tsp	2,50ml
1 Tsp	5ml
1 / 2 Tbsp	7,4ml
1 Tbsp	15ml

 

Cups (Cups):

1 / 4 cup	59ml
1 / 3 cup	79ml
1 / 2 cup	118ml
1 cup	236ml

 

It is not easy to translate recipes whose ingredients are specified by weight, since the same volume for different products has different weight.

 

If we want to know the equivalences in grams, the thing gets complicated, since, to give an example, the same volume of wheat flour and ground almonds does not weigh the same. That is, 1 Tbsp of wheat flour does not weigh the same as 1 Tbsp of ground almond.

That is the reason why it is difficult to translate a recipe that is designed with the means in grams to cups and tablespoons.

When you begin to familiarize yourself with cups and spoons, you will realize the comfort of using them, and you will not want to weigh anything again, I assure you.

It is also interesting to know the equivalences between cups and spoons / teaspoons, that is, how many spoonfuls equals 1 cup, 1 / 2 cup, etc. For that I have prepared a simple table that you can see below:

 

Equivalence between cups, tablespoons and teaspoons.
CUPS (CUPS)	SPOONS (TBSP)	SPOONS (TSP)
1 / 4 CUP	4	12
1 / 3 CUP	5	16
1 / 2 CUP	8	24
3 / 4 CUP	12	36
1 COFFEE MUG	16	48

 

Measuring spoons and cups are of many types, I love stainless steel, it is a material that does not spoil and lasts forever, but plastic are also very practical.

The ones that I do not recommend you use daily are those of other materials less suitable for food, an example of which are the ones that you can see in the image of the cover, which are decorative, they look great in the photos, but they are not for everything use.

 

 

Maybe I miss you a bit about measuring the ingredients like that, but if you stop to think, there are some recipes in the Spanish pastries whose measurements are based on a specific container, I'm sure you know what I mean, the classic yogurt cake, it sounds to you, right?

In my house it was prepared from time to time, and consisted of preparing a basic cake with yogurt, whose container, which has a capacity of approximately 125 ml, was used to measure the rest of the ingredients, flour, sugar and oil.

Another mass that I remember seeing my grandmother do, whose measuring instrument was a glass of water (250ml), was a dough for empanada, it was a mixture of a glass of beer and another of oil, to add little flour to little until you get a manageable dough that could be extended.

These are just two examples of how volume measurement has always been done. One of the gadgets that never fails in Spanish kitchens is a measuring cup with its hundreds of brands for liquid and dry ingredients.

With cups and measuring spoons you can forget about it, the recipes that are measured based on cups and tablespoons are easy to execute, intuitive and easier to remember.

 

The measuring spoons will be a before and after in your homemade recipes.

 

Advantages of measuring spoons and cups:

• Regularity in your results, your recipes will always be just as good.
• You do not need scales.
• It is easier to memorize the recipes.
• There are many measures, some sets of spoons measure up to 1/8 tsp, (1/8 of a teaspoon, it would be "a pinch").
• When we use condiments and spices it is very easy to adjust the dose, and that the result is always the same.
• They are suitable for solid and liquid products.

 

Important:

• When we make a recipe with these measures, we must always put the spoonful of the indicated product. Otherwise we will be adding more amount.
• Choose a set of good quality spoons, there are many materials, stainless steel, plastic, etc., you should pay attention to the material is suitable for food.

 

I hope this post will help you to understand my recipes a bit better and how to prepare them, you may already be familiar with the cups, if that is the case, tell me how you started to use them and if they are as practical as me.

If you did not know them, I encourage you to do a set of them, they do not take up space in the kitchen and the satisfaction they will provide is enormous.

A lot of health!

Francesca 🙂