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Comment by dave5104 | Hacker News Reader

If you're using it to measure solids like flour, you're actually using it incorrectly. The OXO cup is really for measuring liquids. To measure out solids (flour, sugar, etc.) you should be using solid measuring cups.

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I will never understand the US idea of measuring solids by volume. If you recipes called for "200g of flour", then that's trivial to measure out on a scales.

They don't - they measure by ratio. 1 cup originally meant just that - whatever cup you had lying around. in an era in the late 19C when few had access to expensive scales, the idea of one level cup became a simple antidote to "butter the size of an egg" recipies. Fannie Farmer's book in 1896 popularised standard ratio measures - see an episode of QI for this and related jokes :-)

Except the sometimes come with units that aren't relative, such as "one egg" or "one teaspoon of sugar".

It's quicker sometimes.

This morning I made some oatmeal. I took a 1/2 measuring cup, scooped out some oatmeal, shook it quickly to remove the overflow, threw it in a pot, and dropped the measuring cup in my sink. It took around 5-10 seconds.

If I had to do the same by weight, I would have had to get my scale, put on a bowl, zero the scale, slowly start pouring oatmeal onto the scale until it reached the desired weight, throw that into a pot, put the bowl in my sink, and put the scale away. That'll probably run around 15-20 seconds. If I screw up and poured too much into the bowl by accident, it'll take a lot longer to correct than briefly shaking a pre-sized 1/2 measuring cup.

Other times a scale is much easier to use too; it just depends on the context.

You would put the pot directly on the scale, surely. No need for an intermediate container.

You'd put a pot of boiling water on a scale? Wouldn't that risk damaging it?

I don't make oatmeal, so I don't know the exact procedure, but if one is bring the water to a boil before putting in the oats, then the simple solution is just to use your serving bowl — the one you will eat the cooked meal from — instead. I do that with pasta, for example.

The extra 10 seconds are an acceptable cost when it comes to trying to figure out how add 3/4 of a cup of margarine.

I hate measuring anything by volume. Life seems much easier if you just treat every liquid as 1g per ml and only ever use scales.

Also in regards to accuracy, weight never changes.

Volume fluctuates depending on temperature.

Weight does change around the world, mostly because at the equator you are farther away from the centre of mass of the earth than you are at the poles, but also because of local gravity anomalies. It's mass that never changes, so maybe we should all get an inertial balance for our kitchen!

Unless you are measuring ethanol, which is more like 0.78g per mL.

So his method comes with additional health benefits for free.

To measure out solids, you should be using a kitchen scale, but Fannie Farmer's legacy lives on: http://roadside-attraction.com/why-i-hate-measuring-cups-and...

This actually makes my point even more poignant.

Where I live, the majority measuring cups can be used both for liquid and solids, they usually come with a bunch of scales for a variety of products, both with volume and weight[1].

Recipes are usually "200ml of milk and 1 cup of flour, eggs, mix it" I put the 200ml on the measure a cup and add the rest on top of it and mix on the same cup to avoid having yet another bowl to wash. I only use another bowl for making larger things, like cakes.

[1] http://www.sousanatal.com.br/gerenciador/app/webroot/images/...

I like to measure solids like flour and sugar by weight whenever possible. Especially with flour, the packing density introduces too much variation to get a good measurement by volume (or so my experience has indicated).

I like to measure things like honey (21g = 1 tbsp) by weight too, because half of it tends to stick to the measuring spoon.

Accuracy aside, I find it easier to cook by weight (especially if I'm scaling the recipe). I set the bowl on the scale, dump in an ingredient, press tare, dump in the next one, press tare. No fiddling around with measuring cups and spoons.

What weight are you using for a cup of AP flour when converting recipes? (I usually go with 125 g, per the USDA nutrient database, but I've seen numbers as high as 150 g elsewhere.)

For my most common flour-using recipe (bread machine bread), I use 140 g/cup (the conversion in the recipe book suggests 137 g).

Edit: that's for high-gluten bread flour, which may have a different density than AP flour.

I have no problem using liquid measuring cups for solids. Just wiggle the cup a bit, and the flour will level itself. My main reason for segregating solids and liquids is to keep the solids from sticking in the cup. Nothing needs to be all that precise except for some kinds of sweets. At the end of the job, there's nothing to clean.

My dad, a chemist, insists on weighing the dry ingredients, and I agree in principle, but find volume to be quicker.

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