Cooking tip: weigh all your utensils

2026-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

I have been cooking this way for years, and I am surprised it is not more common: I weigh all my pans, pots, bowls, colanders, plates, basically anything that can hold ingredients, and keep the list handy.

You know the dance. The recipe says 300g of flour, so I put the bowl on the scale and tare. Then I want to add the sugar in the same bowl, but the bowl is already on the scale with the flour in it — I do not know the tare anymore, so I do mental arithmetic, or I weigh each ingredient in its own bowl and wash more dishes than I cooked.

With the weights written down, I never need to tare: pan on the scale, read the total, subtract its weight. A 1.2kg pan showing 1.8kg total — 0.6kg of food in it, exactly. It also gives me total transparency on portions: I can weigh the whole pot of pasta and divide by the number of plates without empty plates sitting around the kitchen.

I keep the list on a post-it stuck on a shelf, but you can choose a note app (e.g. Google Keep) — any paper sheet or note app works. Just keep it up to date.

Colas.Nahaboo.net - cooking

Cooking tip: weigh all your utensils