Do You Have a Kitchen Scale?

i just read an article on Slate about Gordon Ramsay‘s new cookbook, and I was dumbfounded to read the author’s assertion that normal American cooks don’t have scales in their kitchens: “Many ingredients are listed only by weight … as if Americans kept scales in the kitchen the way Europeans do.”

Especially considering the American obsession with counting calories, fat grams, and other food components, I thought everyone had at least one kitchen scale. I have three. Which apparently makes me extremely abnormal.

I have one “old fashioned” scale — properly called a “balance” — which has a brass bowl on one side of a fulcrum, and a flat platform on the other side, with a dozen brass figures of different weights. Technically, these scales measure mass. I don’t really use this one often, because it’s rather slow. But it looks very nice in my kitchen, so I keep it for decorative purposes. The kids like to play “guess the weight” with it, putting a fruit or vegetable in the bowl and trying to guess what weight will be needed to balance the platform.

I have a Cuisinart mechanical scale that weighs items up to ten ounces (300g). I use this one a lot for measuring individual portions of foods. You know, a serving of Doritos is 30g, so this way I can buy snack foods cheaply in huge bags and portion them accurately into smaller Ziplocs. (You do reuse your Ziplocs, don’t you?)

I have a Williams Sonoma German-made mechanical scale that weighs items up to 10 pounds (4800g). I use this one when I buy family-size packs of meat, poultry, and cheese at the Sam’s Club. Put a Ziploc quart-size freezer bag in the bowl of the scale, measure in one pound of meat or four chicken breasts, and freezing is easy. I freeze flat so I can get more in the freezer.

I love my scales. Nothing would convince me to part with them. I use them almost every day. And I don’t care how “abnormal” that makes me.

Tags: cooking, Family Life, Gordon Ramsay, kitchen, scale