Hi there friends of the metric system. Glad I found this community because I'm building something pretty much for you :)

Usually, when I find a recipe online, I make a note in my phone with a simplified version, converted to metric. It turns into a little cheatsheet when I cook.

To make this easier, I built a tool that takes a recipe URL and converts it into my favorite format. Originally, I made it just for myself, but I figured it might be useful for others too.

I’m not trying to make money from this, so please excuse this promotional post. If you’d like to try it, you’ll need to create a free account—this is only to manage costs since I can’t cover unlimited usage for everyone online.

The tool is still in testing, and I think it needs more finetuning for all types of recipes. Conversion to metric is tricky, but I’ve had good results so far.

Try it here: https://byebyecups.vercel.app

Sausage & Egg McMuffin - recipe from McDonald's

https://preview.redd.it/ukifirrtdemd1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=1cc4c972a6dcb63ec3384c5d292852ec5e73532b

https://preview.redd.it/t4q7w6zzhxjd1.png?width=624&format=png&auto=webp&s=80fe48197110f82eef7636475bf8b12873cbf92f

Ingredients:

• 300 ml white wine

• 80 g sugar

• 3 egg yolks

• 24 g cornstarch

• 200 ml cream

• 5 ml vanilla extract

• Optional: Lemon zest or a splash of lemon juice for added freshness

Instructions:

1. **Mix**: In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, and a small amount of wine until smooth.
2. **Heat**: Heat the remaining wine in a pot until warm. Slowly add the egg mixture, whisking continuously, and cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens (but do not let it boil).
3. **Cool**: Remove from heat and let the mixture cool. Once cooled, fold in the vanilla extract and whipped cream.
4. **Chill**: Pour into dessert glasses and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
5. **Serve**: Garnish with fresh fruit, whipped cream, or lemon zest.

Pleasantly surprised to see Chuds BBQ’s Brioche Burger Buns recipe in metric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-7PRJVVT94

110g milk - warm to 90F

10g yeast

450g flour

14g dough conditioner

50g sugar

8g salt

1 egg yolk

2 whole eggs

230g butter, softened

It's a real challenge in the U.S. to get your hands on a pure metric kitchen scale. Dual-unit scales are easy to find, but I loathe the clutter of extraneous buttons and unwanted modes.

Fortunately, there is a pure metric kitchen scale available on Amazon that ships from Amazon (Note: Amazon is a monopoly that employs tons of anti-consumer dark UI patterns, but unfortunately there are no convenient alternatives in the U.S.).

I have this scale and it works great

Tanita KF-200 Kitchen Scale, 2 kg:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZA1UM3

The beginning

Boil the potatoes with their skin on in a pot of water (this takes about 25 minutes). In the meantime, you can peel the onions and cut them into small cubes. Wash the chives and cut them into very fine rings. Bring the vegetable broth to the boil and set aside.

Tip: If the spiciness of the onion is too intense for you, you can wrap the cut onion cubes in a tea towel and rinse them with cold water. Or sauté the onion cubes in rapeseed oil for a few minutes until they are translucent.

The potato salad

Now you can peel the potatoes (best when they are still slightly warm) and cut them into slices or, if you like it particularly fine, grate the potatoes into slices. Next, add the Hengstenberg Altmeister, the finely diced onions, salt, mustard, pepper and the warm broth and carefully fold it into the potatoes. Then let the rapeseed oil drip in while stirring gently. The vinegar, spices and oil gradually combine to create a perfect salad dressing that nestles around the potato slices.

The finishing touch

Now sprinkle the finely chopped chives over the potato salad and serve the salad in bowls or deep plates. The potato salad can be part of a salad buffet or serve as a side dish with meatballs or sausages.

• 900 g waxy potatoes
• 1 vegetable onion
• 100 ml Hengstenberg old master vinegar
• 130 ml rapeseed oil
• 100 ml vegetable broth
• 1 bunch of chives
• 30 ml mustard
• Salt
• White pepper (black pepper is an alternative, of course)

Happy Pi day! This is as close as I could get to a metric pie recipe. It turned out great!

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/best-blueberry-pie/comment-page-9/#comment-1195639

2023-10-13

An article in Lifehacker.com discusses how to measure ingredients, and when it's appropriate to measure by mass or by volume.

The author writes:

I transitioned to weighing ingredients once I started baking professionally, but more and more home cooks are pivoting towards the humble kitchen scale. They’re small, affordable, accessible, electronic, and easy to use. These are exciting times for home cooks, but also for the metric system (in the United States, at least).

And:

Weighing ingredients is as accurate and consistent as your scale. Most of them are pretty darn accurate, and mass is much harder to argue with than volume. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Once you get a kitchen scale, weigh a cup of flour that’s been scooped and a cup that’s been spooned and leveled. The difference can be surprising. Click the scale over to measure grams and weigh a tablespoon of fine table salt and a tablespoon of chunky kosher salt. If you’re making bread, your salt measurement could mean life or death (for the yeast).

​

The National Institute of Science and Technology has opened an online Metric Kitchen

It is intended as an educational resource. At present, it has pages with:

Recipe Gallery (6 recipes available)

Culinary measurement tips

Cookware and tools

Culinary Temperature

Cooking Measurement Equivalencies (approximations to US measures)

There is also a link to a NIST Metric Recipe Book with five of the recipes from the Recipe Gallery, but not the Pumpkin Pie.

An online discussion of how measures used in cooking – specifically, spoons and cups – vary between countries, plus three dessert recipes in metric measures. And we learn the reason why American butter is divided into "sticks", and are told that a stick is 113 -115 grams.

An article in Southern Living (a lifestyle magazine for the American South,) tells us why we need a kitchen scale, (more consistent results, especially for baking,) and how to use one for the best results. She also recommends using the metric system.

6 Reasons: –

• Less cleanup
• More accuracy
• You can effortlessly divide batter or dough
• No more fractions (ie, it's easier to reduce the size of the item you are making)
• You don't need different measuring tools for liquids and dry ingredients
• Easier to measure wonky ingredients (The example the author gives is walnuts)

https://i.stack.imgur.com/olw5P.png

this is why Fahrenheit is stupid. You can see in Celsius with raise in temperature the number correspond and reflect how much temperature is changed. For example if you want to double the amount of temperature in Celsius the number correspond to it doubles.  But not in fahrenheit, it is so stupid. 

lets say i want to half the amount of heat/energy in the oven from 400F, 200F isnt actually the correct answer the number is halved but the actually heat/energy in the oven isnt actually halved. this is so stupid!

​

​

Do you know what is the actual halved of 400F? or how to calculate it?

Kevin is Cooking is a website run by Kevin (no surname given,) promoting easy-to-do recipes for making "comfort food."

A couple of years ago he found the British TV programme Great British Baking Show which also introduced him to metric cooking.

From his recipe page on Hot Cross Buns:

My only complaint is the book [How to Bake by Paul Hollywood] was all in metric measurements and I had a tough time converting. There are so many different pieces of info, conversion charts and online calculators to assist, but truth be told, so many gave different quantities. So I went to the basics and simply weighed the ingredients and took note.

So, needless to say, anyone having to convert to metric from US Customary measurement I applaud you and thanks for following along here! Since then I had a recipe conversion plugin added to the site to make it easier for everyone (if you’ve noticed for the past 2 years).

Why doesn’t the U.S. teach the metric system is beyond me, but that’s another matter…

His automated converter runs to odd grams and lots of decimal points. As an example, Kevin's recipe for Crispy Beef Flautas tells us we need 907.18 g of chuck roast and 453.59 g of tomatillos.

Also, the converter needs to be told that liquids in the metric system are measured in millilitres. In the Hot Cross Bun recipe it lists half a cup of milk and half a cup of water. This becomes 120 g of each liquid in the metric version. Presumably there is some confusion somewhere between the FDA standard cup of 240 ml, fluid ounces and ounce of mass.

(Also posted to r/metric)