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 ground meat, zip the bag shut while flattening the meat and pressing out all the air, and freezing is easy. I freeze flat so I can get more in the freezer. One pound of ground meat, four chicken breasts, or six filets mignon will fit nicely in a quart-size freezer bag.

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: budgeting, bulk buying, cooking, Family Life, food, freezing, kitchen, saving money, scale