MID WEEK PHILOSOPHY: SCALE

Food scale that is!

I cannot live without mine.  I was thinking, they always ask chefs this question in food magazines, “What kitchen tools can you not live without ? or What are your favorite kitchen tools?”   Well, one of mine is the food scale.  The one I eventually purchased and like very much is small,  like a thin book.  I can stick it upright in my cupboard and it hardly takes any room.

This was not my first food scale though.  I originally had a non-digital 2 piece.  I wanted it specifically to weigh meat (?), and for the life of me I cannot remember why that was so important.  Anyway, when spring came around one year and I needed to weigh out fertilizer for our dosatron’s  continuous feed,  15 gallon tank ! ( hmm, you say, what the frig is that?  believe me, it’s not food related, haha!) I brought out my  2 piece scale and vowed to myself that this would be just a one time thing and back in the kitchen it would go!  Well spring is super crazy around here and guess what?  The scale never made it back, I used it a bunch more times, it got rusty and stained and thus unusable for food!  I bought another one and for a long time, I did not use it much until I made chocolate chip cookies one day.  My recipe called for a 12 oz. package of chocolate chips and I realized they had downsized the variety that I liked to 11 ounces!  So of course, 1 ounce made a difference to me and I whipped out my scale.  After that, I started using it more and more!

So I went on Amazon to find my scale so I could share with you what I had but unfortunately mine does not seem available anymore.  So I poked around Amazon’s website  to see what was, and this is what I found:

They rate this particular food scale very highly:  EatSmart Precision Pro – Multifunction Digital Kitchen Scale.  It’s not as versatile storage wise but  it does take regular batteries, which some people find essential.  It has a nice range of colors, so if you needed to keep it out, you could match it to your kitchen’s color scheme.  My Salter food scale takes 2 lithium  batteries, which are expensive and sometimes annoying to find but I think that’s why it can be so skinny. But maybe the battery issue is not important to you.  I believe the lithium batteries last a little longer…..

I also found another scale  from Amazon that is very thin, thinner than mine, and has a slightly bigger platform:  Ozeri Professional Digital Kitchen Scale.  It takes lithium batteries,  though.

Many recipes now have weight measurements  included, along with volume measurements, which I find invaluable.  Weighing is much more accurate.  But I also use  my food scale for weighing other food stuff besides ingredients in a recipe.  Meatballs for uniform cooking, cookie dough for even baking, bread dough for rolls (like the Refrigerator Rolls Deluxe) , freshly ground chuck beef for hamburgers, and even weighing out  pasta, so I don’t cook too much!

So, think about it, maybe a food scale is in your future!  At least put it on your wish list!

Happy weighing and measuring from my kitchen to yours!