What is "a cup" ?
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So the idea of a liquid volume is clear but why use a cup for solids such as spinach, why not just the weight?
Because the vast majority of the population doesn't own a kitchen scale. Almost everybody who cooks owns a measuring cup. And for most things...especially in baking recipes with flour and sugar...a cup works perfectly well because they are easy to measure with a cup. I've never had a problem with it.
If you're cooking something with spinach...or carrots...or broccoli...those recipes really don't need to be super precise so a measuring cup is still fine even though the vegetables don't conform perfectly to the cup shape. Your stew or soup or side dish will be basically the same if you use 2 cups of spinach or 3.0. For things like that I sometimes don't even bother measuring at all because it isn't a big deal.1 -
Wynterbourne wrote: »livingleanlivingclean wrote: »jwcanfield wrote: »Easy to solve. Go to your local favorite grocery or discount store. Get a set of dry measuring cups for .........dry ingredients. A set of liquid measuring cups for........liquid ingredients. Can't tell the difference. Ask for help and you'll be all set!
I have never seen separate dry/wet cups. They often sell measuring jugs with the measurements up the sides, but the mls are the same as our measuring cups. (although they also show pints, and fl oz. Not that I have any use for those)
The cup in the front is a dry measuring cup, the cup in the back is a wet/liquid measuring cup.
You don't really need both...unless it is a personal preference. If you measure out one cup of sugar in a dry measuring cup and then pour it into the "wet" measuring cup, it will still come to the one cup mark. I used one cup for most of my life and my recipes always turned out just fine.2 -
duplicate post0
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MoiAussi93 wrote: »Wynterbourne wrote: »livingleanlivingclean wrote: »jwcanfield wrote: »Easy to solve. Go to your local favorite grocery or discount store. Get a set of dry measuring cups for .........dry ingredients. A set of liquid measuring cups for........liquid ingredients. Can't tell the difference. Ask for help and you'll be all set!
I have never seen separate dry/wet cups. They often sell measuring jugs with the measurements up the sides, but the mls are the same as our measuring cups. (although they also show pints, and fl oz. Not that I have any use for those)
The cup in the front is a dry measuring cup, the cup in the back is a wet/liquid measuring cup.
You don't really need both...unless it is a personal preference. If you measure out one cup of sugar in a dry measuring cup and then pour it into the "wet" measuring cup, it will still come to the one cup mark. I used one cup for most of my life and my recipes always turned out just fine.
I've actually seen many videos where people have bought multiple dry measuring cups and had almost every one of them contain a different volume than the other. They can be very inconsistent regarding accuracy. But I almost never use them anymore so it's irrelevant to me at this point. I was just responding to livingleanlivingclean's comment regarding not having seen different cups for wet and dry.0 -
Wynterbourne wrote: »livingleanlivingclean wrote: »jwcanfield wrote: »Easy to solve. Go to your local favorite grocery or discount store. Get a set of dry measuring cups for .........dry ingredients. A set of liquid measuring cups for........liquid ingredients. Can't tell the difference. Ask for help and you'll be all set!
I have never seen separate dry/wet cups. They often sell measuring jugs with the measurements up the sides, but the mls are the same as our measuring cups. (although they also show pints, and fl oz. Not that I have any use for those)
The cup in the front is a dry measuring cup, the cup in the back is a wet/liquid measuring cup.
Thats a measuring jug, and a measuring cup.
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Many recipes seem to use this expression, is there a size or weight for this?
If it is a liquid a cup is 8 oz.
There is a dry measuring cup though which is different than a liquid measuring cup. It is a standard size kitchen tool but the weight would depend on the item put into it and how it packs into the cup.
http://dish.allrecipes.com/cup-to-gram-conversions/
A 'dry' measuring cup is still 8 fl oz. There's no difference between that and a liquid measuring cup. I've seen this notion on these boards before and I have no idea where people got that idea from.
I use this chart
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart.html
But you have to keep in mind that a lot of times the recipes that give volume instead of weights for solids can give different results when you convert in grams (I've had to throw away some bread dough because clearly for that recipe they had packed the flour to 140g minimum per cup because my dough was soup using the standard 120g 'cup' equivalent). I'm not sure where All Recipes got that 128g per cup thing for flour though, considering that every single brand of flour says that one serving is 1/4 cup (30 or 31g) on the package.
The 2 tools are not the exact same measurement in my experience and anything I have read. I have a few basic cookbooks that explicitly advise against interchanging the liquid and dry measuring cups.
My dry measuring cup filled with water does not equal a cup of water in my liquid measuring cup. The dry measuring cup holds just slightly less liquid. A level cup of sugar in my dry measuring cup does not go to the 1 cup mark on the liquid measuring cup. The difference with sugar is much bigger than the difference between the water measurements.
It would seem safer to use the dry measuring cups for liquids rather than the liquid measuring cup for dry ingredients.
http://kirbiecravings.com/2015/03/baking-101-liquid-vs-dry-measuring-cups.html
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5450-dry-versus-liquid-measuring-cups
http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/dry-measuring-cups-vs-liquid-measuring-cups/
Better to go by weight for dry ingredients if the recipe gives them. If not use then use the proper measuring tool.
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livingleanlivingclean wrote: »Wynterbourne wrote: »livingleanlivingclean wrote: »jwcanfield wrote: »Easy to solve. Go to your local favorite grocery or discount store. Get a set of dry measuring cups for .........dry ingredients. A set of liquid measuring cups for........liquid ingredients. Can't tell the difference. Ask for help and you'll be all set!
I have never seen separate dry/wet cups. They often sell measuring jugs with the measurements up the sides, but the mls are the same as our measuring cups. (although they also show pints, and fl oz. Not that I have any use for those)
The cup in the front is a dry measuring cup, the cup in the back is a wet/liquid measuring cup.
Thats a measuring jug, and a measuring cup.
In the USA they are both called measuring cups.
Don't forget, the US is one of only three countries not using metric, so it will frequently make no sense. LOL 2 -
Don't ever change, MFP. 38 answers to "What is a cup?"
We are MFP. We overthink absolutely everything. 3 -
Americans are confusing.
I've cooked and baked my whole life by volume measurements. My food is good. I still don't own a digital scale, and honestly, if I did I wouldn't use it. Things like bread I can definitely do by feel (and I've got the sourdough baked tonight to prove it). I own some glass liquid measuring cups, and a set of dry measuring cups and spoons. I also fake it with coffee mugs as necessary, lol.1 -
I admit, I'm a big advocate of weighing solids but i still use cup measures to bake (for dry ingredients). But inky because that's what my recipe books usually have. I'd prefer if they all had weights0
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I remember reading somewhere that if you were using a dry measuring cup for liquids, you should add an extra 2 tbsp. That source also said not to sweat it if you were dealing with amounts like 1/4 cup; it would be close enough.0
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My "dry" measuring cups are 250ml, just like my wet measuring cups are.0
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MoiAussi93 wrote: »
That strongly depends where you are - I never owned measuring cups until recently and basically they are my husband's anyway he bought them
Always had scale from day one - usually a cheap non digital thing but I had a scale Where I live that was the standard to have in the kitchen - kitchen scales
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MoiAussi93 wrote: »So the idea of a liquid volume is clear but why use a cup for solids such as spinach, why not just the weight?
Because the vast majority of the population doesn't own a kitchen scale. Almost everybody who cooks owns a measuring cup. And for most things...especially in baking recipes with flour and sugar...a cup works perfectly well because they are easy to measure with a cup. I've never had a problem with it.
If you're cooking something with spinach...or carrots...or broccoli...those recipes really don't need to be super precise so a measuring cup is still fine even though the vegetables don't conform perfectly to the cup shape. Your stew or soup or side dish will be basically the same if you use 2 cups of spinach or 3.0. For things like that I sometimes don't even bother measuring at all because it isn't a big deal.
May have to do with where you live. Most households I've been to have a kitchen scale. I remember it sitting on my grandma's counter, so it's not a new thing either. We've had one for as long as I can remember.
Off topic, but when I first started logging food and saw posts asking "do you weigh your food?" I used to think "there are people who don't? How do they document food then?" I can be dense sometimes.1 -
When I didn't have a measuring cup, I seriously used a coffee mug. That's how my mom taught me to cook. She was also pretty liberal with the substitutions, as ain't nobody who lives in Little House on the Prairie got time for "scallions" and "leeks" when onions will do.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. There is no world standard for what a kitchen contains. I've been taking some international cooking classes taught by immigrant home cooks, and none of them measure anything at all. It's hell to try to write a recipe (let alone calculate calories).0 -
I don't measure when cooking (also don't do recipes other than reading cookbooks for ideas), but I wouldn't bake without measuring -- I know people do, but I don't bake enough for that. (It's also why I have a food scale, as I used to use it for baking some, when I thought it was going to become more of a hobby than it actually did.)0
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