When I'm in the kitchen, I often don't measure things. It's not that I don't see the value in measurements and there are several things that I will measure with more specificity (like some baked products, for example), but I wanted to take a moment and talk about estimating measurements. Is estimation a perfectly accurate method? No. But can it be useful to save time, energy (less cleanup with less measuring tools), and to build agency in the kitchen? Absolutely!
This can certainly seem daunting at first! How can you tell how much is a cup of sugar just by looking at it? Is that a teaspoon or two tablespoons of oil?? In this post I'll show you how I learned to estimate measurements and I hope it's useful if you'd like to do the same.
Different substances (e.g. flour, rice, water, and so on) will look different when measured out to a cup, so we're going to measure them out and see what they look like. We can break ingredients into some basic categories:
Powders and the like: flours, sugars, ground spices, etc.
Grains: Be careful of shape and size. Quinoa, as an example, is smaller and sits more densely in a measuring cup than long-grain rice. Keep that in mind and either heap or scant the amount slightly and you'll usually be fine. Brunoise (very small dice, between eighth and sixteenth inch cubes depending on how fine you choose to make it) also tends to fall into this category.
Liquids: water, milk/cream/non-dairy alternatives, oils, etc. When you start getting into really thick liquid (honey, for example), things get funky, so estimate those separately.
Small solids: Think raisins. Again, shape and size: chocolate chips, dried blueberries, craisins, diced dates and prunes etc are all similar sizes to raisins. So are almonds, some chopped nuts, and small dice (about quarter inch cubes).
Medium solids: Think fresh blueberries. Also, some beans are about this size, and medium dice (about half inch cubes).
Large solids: Think cherry tomatoes. Dried figs and prunes, and large dice (about one inch cubes) also often fit here.
Okay- on to estimating! This is a *process* and doesn't have to be done all at once. It certainly can be, if you'd like, but I totally get that you might not have examples of all of this just sitting around waiting to be measured right now. The way I went about it was to strategically measure when I was actually making something for a while and then eventually I could measure less and less.
I'm going to start with a mixing bowl - mostly because I really only have one good mixing implement, my sturdy 8 cup Pyrex that you'll see in all of my mixing pictures and the pictures that I'll add to this post later on. However, I've also estimated in one of my regular serving bowls and in a single-serve ramekin that I often use for cooking.
Let's take a second here to talk about methods of measurement. The imperial method of measuring (using cups, tablespoons, etc) which is used in the US relies on measuring the volume of the ingredient. Conversely, metric methodology uses the weight of dry ingredients (e.g. grams*) and the volume of wet ingredients (e.g. milliliters). Weight is a more accurate method of measuring dry ingredients because they can settle and pack. Consider a US recipe involving brown sugar: it might say, "1 cup brown sugar, lightly packed". My idea of lightly packed might be a lot firmer or lighter than the recipe authors, but if we took out a scale and measured the weight, we'd be considerably more likely to be using much closer to the same amount of sugar.
*Do you see the unit "grams" and think mass instead of weight? What we're measuring when we weigh something in grams is basically the grams of force on the scale including the impact of gravity (to oversimplify).
Another point is about liquid measurements. It's more accurate to measure liquids with wet measuring implements (my big Pyrex that I mentioned earlier that I use as a mixing bowl is actually a very big wet measuring cup). They way to measure accurately with these is to place the measuring implement on a flat surface, fill it with your liquid, look at it straight on (at eye level, so for example you might crouch to have your head at counter level) and measure at the bottom of the line at the surface of the liquid (the meniscus). The meniscus can be described as a curved line or double line at the surface of the liquid - either way, line the bottom up with the line marking the amount of liquid you'd like on your measuring cup. By the way, this is predominantly for thin liquids - the rule of thumb that I would generally recommend is if you can easily pour it, a wet measure is the implement that would most accurate measure it.
However, to come back to our core understanding of accessibility, nuance, and lived experience in the kitchen, we all have different equipment. I didn't have a food scale for a long time, and some of you may not either! Here's some options:
Use the measuring implements that you have! Alternatively, borrow a set of measuring implements from a friend or neighbor if you can for this estimation exercise if purchasing isn't an option. There's also options to buy things second-hand if finances are tight. On this note, you don't need every single measure in order to succeed - even solely a food scale or just a set of measuring spoons can do the trick in a pinch!
Don't have a food scale, but do have a postal scale? As long as you're not weighing things that are heavier than the scale can stand it should work pretty well the same.
Do you only have dry measure implements? That's okay! You absolutely can use dry measures to measure wet ingredients, but it can be a bit less accurate (which is not the end of the world) or lead to spills (for example, if you are taking water from the sink in a dry measuring cup filled all the way to the top, it's likely to spill before you get to your mixing bowl). To avoid this, something you can try is holding your measuring cup over the bowl while pouring the liquid into it (slowly, so as not to spill over and put too much of the ingredient into your mix!)
Alright, enough talking - let's start estimating! So take out your bowl, measure out a standard measurement of an ingredient type (for example, a cup or 120 grams of flour) and dump it in the bowl. Take a good look at it - how tall is the pile of flour? Where does the edge of the flour end in the bowl? Is it an even mound? Close your eyes and try to picture it in your mind.
The rest of the process is pretty much to do the same thing with all of the other ingredient types. Then, once you feel like you're comfortable with the amounts, try estimating it without measuring and then measure it after to see how accurate your estimation was. You can also using different bowls or any other implement you regularly cook or mix in!
For small measurements (two tablespoons and smaller) I use either a regular spoon or my (clean) hand. For the spoon, I found that a tablespoon was just barely shy of my ordinary dining spoon so I generally just use that. For the measurements using my hand, I used the same estimation technique as above - measuring out a half teaspoon, etc into my hand and seeing how it piles and shapes until I could do it by eye. But to be honest, the vast majority of what calls for small measurements like that (outside of leavening agents, of which I do use hand estimation for a semblance of accuracy) are spices - and my rule for all spices is to taste!
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