Understanding food recipes allows one to be able to prepare the food without fail. Ingredients measurement is one of the key factors in understanding food recipes. The recipes in this site is created as simple as possible to allow people without measuring scale to be able to measure ingredients in proportion as appropriately as possible by using just spoons or kitchen tools one would usually have.These food recipes are written for better understanding by even people not in food or culinary industry. However, one must also understand general measurements used in the recipes, cooking ingredients and food preparation methods (cutting terms and cooking methods) in order to cook a dish correctly.
Remember to adjust quantity of ingredients according to number of servings too. If a food recipe is meant for 10 pax (10 servings) but you will serve food only for 5 pax, divide ingredients to half. Eg. 1000g of flour to bake a cake for 10 pax are cut down to 500g for 5 pax.
Now let’s first understand some simple ingredients measurement used in food recipes:
Quantity measurement:
tsp = teaspoon
tbsp = tablespoon
to taste = sprinkle (taste the food and sprinkle more if necessary)
Weight measurement:
gm or g = gram
kgm or kg = kilogram (=1000g)
Liquid measurement:
ml = milliliter
l = liter (=1000 ml)
(note: 1000ml of water is about 1000g of water)
Take note of tablespoon and dessert spoon in the photo. In our country, spoons we often use at home (and even most restaurants) for our main course are usually dessert spoon. Tablespoon is slightly larger.
Even without proper measuring scale, accurate liquid measurement is still possible with a simple measurement method. Use empty mineral water bottles for liquid measurement. Please make sure they are clean. A small bottle is usually 500ml. To get smaller scales (eg. 100ml), you can do marking on a bottle. The picture here shows markings on a big bottle. Every marking at 500ml is obtained by emptying water from a 500ml bottle gradually into this bottle.
A tip for measuring water content when cooking soup: cover ingredients with water double the height of ingredients in pot (see diagram).
Weight measurement is harder to be accurate without proper measuring equipment. However, it can be estimated. For example flour that came in a packet of 500g. Pour out half and you’ll get 250g. This method is not advisable for preparation of pastry food such as cakes and breads where accurate ingredients measurement is extremely important. There is no need to risk ruining the food. Small kitchen weighing scale is affordably available at most hypermarkets 