What is "a cup" ?
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250ml
The one true cup! MOAHAHAHA!
Yes, I am Canadian, lol.2 -
Units in US are stuck in the 1800s. It's one of the things that's holding us back from trading with the rest of the world.
"The metric system: we're inching toward it."6 -
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!
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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)1 -
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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.
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dutchandkiwi wrote: »Hawaiian_Iceberg 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?
Historically people didn't always have a set of kitchen scales so using a measuring cup was the next best thing. Having a recipe that said add 1 cup of flour would still be "fairly" accurate.
Why it's still used I've no idea. Especially when you see entries like "Carrots - 1 cup".
The countries that use them are still not metric - stuck in old sizes systems
It's not that. We use cups instead of oz because many won't be able to easily estimate the oz of flour or carrots or whatever they are using.
Metric would be mL (which our cups for liquid tend to have on them). Dry cups would be oz or grams if weighed. The cup is an alternative to oz (or g), not because we use oz.
(I prefer grams to oz for cooking, but that's just not the issue.)0 -
We may all be saying the same thing, but if it is water a cup is 8 oz.
If it is oil, it's not 8 oz.
I think what Francl was saying is that the volume of a dry cup and cup for liquids is the same.1 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »
We may all be saying the same thing, but if it is water a cup is 8 oz.
If it is oil, it's not 8 oz.
I think what Francl was saying is that the volume of a dry cup and cup for liquids is the same.
Yeah my point is that a cup is 8oz, whether it's liquid or dry... it still holds 8 LIQUID ounces... and you can still use a 'dry' cup for liquids (and I honestly still don't see why you couldn't use a 'liquid' cup for flour or sugar, but whatever).0 -
Yeah, I use a dry cup for liquids, since my liquid cup has a leak and I keep forgetting to replace it.0
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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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