What is "a cup" ?

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  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
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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.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,959 Member
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    My "dry" measuring cups are 250ml, just like my wet measuring cups are.
  • dutchandkiwi
    dutchandkiwi Posts: 1,389 Member
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    MoiAussi93 wrote: »
    kev0360 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.

    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
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    edited May 2017
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    MoiAussi93 wrote: »
    kev0360 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.
  • annacole94
    annacole94 Posts: 997 Member
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    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).
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    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.)

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