1,545 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

A memo of utensil weights

You will no doubt have come across this problem while cooking: after starting a recipe, when you already have some ingredients in a pan and have maybe cooked them, you need to know the weight of the pan's contents so that you can take half out, or add the same weight of sugar, for example.

28 K 4.6/5 (20 reviews)

Last modified on: May 9^th 2011

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

A memo of utensil weights

This would be much simpler if you could just weigh the full pan, but unfortunately the weight of the pan itself would be counted by the scales and mess up the sums.

A precise example: you weigh the pan which registers 750 grams, but this 750 grams is the weight of the contents + the weight of the pan itself (which, of course, you don't know).

There are two solutions to this problem:
1) You pour the contents into another empty pan on the scales, which you set to zero (if you have adjustable or add-and-weigh scales), but this has two disadvantages: it makes more washing up for nothing and it wastes time.

2) You consult your memo of utensil weights. This is a little document which contains the weight of each of your utensils.

Going back to our earlier example, the full pan weighs 750g and it weighs 350g empty; conclusion: the contents weigh 750 – 350 = 400g! No extra washing up, just a simple subtraction which takes no more than 10 seconds.

Obviously, you need to keep this memo to hand, and of course, you need to have made it beforehand. So it's worth spending a little time weighing your utensils (pans, moulds, tins, bowls, other containers…) and noting the weight carefully for each one.

Paper memo

The simplest method is just to use a sheet of paper: one column for “name” (such as "big pan"” , "blue bowl" , "glass flan dish" …) and another column for “weight” . This is simple to do and read, and once done, it can be kept in a drawer ready for use, which could be soon.

Photo memo

But with a digital camera, you can do something even quicker and easier. This is how I created my utensil memo:

I weighed the utensil
I placed it on a wipe-clean board and wrote the weight in grams large and clear
I photographed it, checking that both the utensil and the weight could be seen clearly
I arranged all the photos before printing them in a convenient format

With this system, there is no need to describe or name the item and no need to write the weight again as this can be read on the photo.

So, when I need to know the weight of a utensil, just a quick glance at the photo memo and I have the answer.

See what it looks like for yourself:

memo weight of utensils

It doesn't really matter what method you use, the important thing is to make a note of the weight of your utensils, and to keep it handy – you will find it very useful and the hour or so it will take you to make it will be repaid in the time and washing up saved later.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20251,6555

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,3195

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,210

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20253,5295

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20258,0733

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Egg yolks and caster sugar

We often come across recipes where we need to mix egg yolks with caster sugar. This would appear to be a very ordinary and simple thing to do but, be warned, these two ingredients can behave oddly together.
February 15^th 201883 K 24.3

The baker always gild twice

I've already told you about gilding, the beaten whole egg that is spread with a brush on anything that needs to brown in the oven: puff pastry, pastries, etc. and that professionals use a lot, I'm going to come back to this to clarify a bit how to do it, and give you a professional tip.
June 9^th 201935 K4.2

Cleaning endives

If you buy your endives elsewhere than in supermarkets, and in this case the best is of course from a market gardener, he or she is the one who planted and harvested them, in this case you will have endives full of earth or sand, depending on where they were grown, which is normal and reassuring, we...
March 24^th 202026 K4.6

Circles vs. moulds tins

If you like to bake or make quiches, pies etc. you must surely have one or more pie pans at home, in different diameters and perhaps materials. They are indispensable, without them there is no way to make beautiful pies, and they work very well, but you have another option, instead of moulds,...
October 2^nd 202017 K5

Should I believe my oven?

Can you really trust your oven? This is an important question as we are always tempted to take the temperature indicated as gospel truth and, unfortunately, this is rarely very precise. .
July 4^th 201133 K4.6