My problem with metric recipes
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ธ.ค. 2019
- Converting a recipe from U.S. to metric measurements is like translating a poem from English to French - if you're not careful, you might end up making it rain ropes.
**SOURCES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE**
My mac & cheese recipe: • Sodium Citrate Mac & C...
Gordon Ramsay's shepherd's pie recipe: • Classic Shepherd's Pie...
2007 journal article on linguistic relativity and the Russian words for blue: www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780
2013 journal article on round number bias: citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/... - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
Q: Why do you hate the metric system?
A: Why don't you watch videos before commenting on them?
Q: But srs, you'll admit this is a clickbaity title, right?
A: Meh, ish. In the annals of TH-cam clickbait, this has gotta be in like the fifth percentile in terms of egregiousness. I can't inform or entertain anyone if they don't click, thus all content creation must be done with that basic exigency in mind. That said, I just changed the original "The problem with metric recipes" title to "My problem with metric recipes," to underline the subjectivity of this issue. This is absolutely an American/Liberian/Burmese problem, not a global problem.
Q: Why don't you just convert to metric?
A: Metric is better in every objective way, but the fact remains that I live in the U.S., and virtually all non-narcotic products are sold here in U.S. customary measurements (which is not the same as Imperial, btw). Since the majority of my audience is from outside the U.S., the thought has definitely occurred to me to switch my entire operation to metric. I might still, at some point. But for right now, I think my current measurement system is a more honest expression of who I am, where I live, and how I think. And, of course, the U.S. does remain, by far, my most important single market. But as I said, I will now be doing basic metric conversions of my recipes in the descriptions.
Q: Why the shot at Gordon Ramsay?
A: While I'm sure Gordon is a wonderful family man, and he is certainly a great chef, I think his public persona is bad for humanity. He's been turning workplace abuse into entertainment since "Boiling Point," and I'm not laughing. He might say that's merely his TV persona and not how he actually conducts himself professionally anymore. Perhaps that's true, and that's great for his employees, but the fact remains that he's projecting a role model to authority figures everywhere, and I think he is thereby perpetuating the same kind of toxic workplace environment that he suffered under MPW, among others.
Q: Why are you getting so hung up on the relatively minor quantitative differences you're discussing in this video, when you're a noted advocate of eyeballing ingredients and of generally being un-fussy in the kitchen?
A: That's a fair question, and it's something I struggle with a lot. I really hope that most people who watch my recipe videos will just take the basic idea of the dish and then adapt it to their own needs, rather than follow it to the letter. And I reckon many (most?) do just that. However, I think the precise recipes I write in my descriptions are more likely to be followed by beginners, and I really worry about leading them astray. Therefore, if converting a recipe from U.S. units to metric causes any of the problems I discussed in this video, the people least able to roll with those punches are also the people most likely to be using the written recipes in the first place, which is why I worry.
Q: Why do you hate the metric system?
A: Why don't you watch videos before commenting on them?
The point is- the problem doesn't go both ways. It does from the perspective of an American, but because of that, it's not something the rest of the world should even care about. I don't give a (dam) what problems Americans have with my recipes. They're a tiny minority.
Edit: title change. The Americans here may still be ignorant, but I appreciate the gesture
I mean, should of expected this reaction with the title
It's too hard for people. I just want to read a title and drop an angry comment. But yes, kind of a clickbaity title, some people could say.
@@tea-stomach-cycle6385 We have the same exact problem when we try recreating an american recipe. Watch the video again, this time try to not get offended and you might get the point.
This is how the rest of the world feels when they try to do an American recipe.
Yeah well get over it
Christopher Peery just making a comment on the subject of the video. Get over yourself bud
Victor Mout Pretty much every American agrees that the metric system is better, we just can’t really do anything individually about it
In my country we use mugs and spoons as measures for recipes, cause its way easier than using a scale
@@vinimooraess ah yes because using mugs and spoons is so much easier than having a scale that just does it all for you in a precise measurement system
You keep saying “Brits” but what you really mean is “rest of the world “
@@chaccaron4321 if you live there nobody wants go there
you are forgetting south of the US is just mexico.
@@chaccaron4321 Everyone treats America like a joke anyways lol, do us a favour and stay in that hellhole.
to be fair given language barriers brits are easily the main foreign media producers for people in the usa
@@imbigw6979 should be mentioned china and other developing countries also produce many components and resources for foreign international companies, so I don't think that's just about in what country is the pollution generated
Having worked in the meat department of a grocery store, the thing about getting 1.1lbs of mince at the meat counter is absolutely wrong, you've got that totally backwards. If you ask for 1.1lbs then at least I know why you're here, you need an abnormal quantity. If you ask for 1lb I want to know why you're wasting my time when I packed out 50 packs of the exact same 1lb mince onto the shelf thirty minutes ago.
Also, every digital scale since the 90s has the ability to switch from imperial to metric with the press of a button.
@@werbnaright5012 Of course, but that doesn't change the fact that you're asking for an unusual amount (in the U.S.), whether you call it 1.1 pounds or 0.5 kilograms. (Which was Adam's point.)
@@Milesco That makes no sense. Because an amount is considered "unusual" doesn't make it any harder to weigh out. I'd also argue that 500g or 1.1lbs is incredibly common. It's a problem manufactured in his head.
@@werbnaright5012 Well, Adam's comment was just a joke anyway, but his point wasn't that it was a difficult amount to weigh, only that it was a nuisance for the butcher to do a custom job (at all) for just one tenth of a pound over the usual amount.
@@Milesco ... that's literally their job?
Your problem isn't with metric recipes, it's conversions and supply issues.
Adam doesn't like weighing ingredients.
US recipes use some fairly intuitive quantities by volume which makes it easy to prepare a meal without a measuring cup or a scale. If you want to do the same thing elsewhere you either need to know the density of everything or deal with fractions of a liter that can become quite hard to keep track of.
Even if conversion didn't happen, there are advantages to both systems
@@puppieslovies It's only intuitive to Adam because that's what he's been taught to use.
@@miwiarts I was saying that volumetric recipes are more intuitive than ones that measure by mass
Getting the right volume by guessing is a lot easier than getting the right weight
@@puppieslovies then we use liters, and that's it xd. we can use volumetrics just a easily as mass since we treat them the same, a kilogram is actually also a liter (of water). we just change the word xd.
@@josue1996jc I've never seen a bread recipe that asks for flour in liters. It is always in grams. This is a conscious decision by people making recipes in metric, and sometimes it is an annoying one.
Of course, every country should measure their recipes in football stadiums/guns.
Then there’s the problem of football 🏈 vs football ⚽️
This is such an odd video from Adam
is this a football stadium or a "football but we dont use our feet, and carry the ball a lot of the time" stadium? :P
OMG you get comment of the year! Pulling ahead right at the finish line!
Anteater23 no theirs football the sport of the world and American football
the world: “why can’t you be normal!”
us: “ *screams in tablespoon* “
"Most Planck units are extremely small, as in the case of Planck length or Planck time, or extremely large, as in the case of Planck temperature or Planck acceleration. For comparison, the Planck energy is approximately equal to the energy stored in an automobile gas tank (57.2 L of gasoline at 34.2 MJ/L of chemical energy)."
This is from Wikipedia's page on Planck's units...
We use table spoons too lol... 15ml
@@micahretief7893 Table spoon as an area
@@olasdorosdiliusimilius2174 Huh? Can you explain?😅
@@micahretief7893 Using tablespoons as a way to measure area is something Americans would totally do.
I work in a restaurant in Baltimore. We write all our recipes in g/kg. Measuring volumes of solids is the dumbest thing there is in American recipes, it opens so many opportunities for inconsistency.
Yeah, volume is the worst way to write recipes.
@@CharliMorganMusic Except liquids obviously
@@RustedCroaker yeah, but even then using mass to measure works just as well, plus you don't need to use two different methods of measurement if everything is measured in mass
If you care for consistency, you burry the volumetric measures deep and burn the shovel. If you want to drive a baker mad, give him a recipe with "3/4 of a cup of water".
I have seen that the food industry often in the US are the most open to the metric. Clearly measuring in 10 and 100 is just so much easier than 8 and 12.
I feel like the differences between two different ovens or even between one spot and another in the same oven are probably greater than the rounding errors we get when converting C to F.
yeah, I used to work in a grocery store bakery, and sometimes I would help out at a different location. We had to set things to different temperatures at the different locations, because even though the different ovens SAID they were the same temperature, they weren't.
Agree! Also, the fact that all recipes I’ve read has a “round” number, ending on 0 or 5, indicates that it how precise you can expect to get a temperature in an oven. In fact, older recipes usually had increments of 25 degrees C, so around 50 F.
It is, by a huge amount. Testing by consumer groups shows even good ovens will vary around plus or minus 25 degrees F around the target temperature. So any variance smaller then that will be completely lost to random variation and frankly you probably need to go to 50 degree increments to really produce a readily noticeable change.
This may be true, but the difference between two ovens or between spots in one oven can be considered (at least mostly) random. The difference is converting C to F is not random, its systematic bias. Therefore on average cooks in the US will be cooking 6 degrees lower than cooks elsewhere, although you may need to look at an extremely large sample size to see its effects outside of the noise that is other random effects as you describe.
That misses the point and it's like saying the difference in weather around the world is huge so warming the globe by 4 degrees won't make a difference.
The metric system : cm, m, km, g, kg, ml, L ...etc
The American system: four elephants, swimming pool, six to seven washing machine, doggy-sized pothole, hamburger weigh, football field ..etc
No, we generally weigh really heavy objects in terms of "Yo Momma."
how tall are you?
3,54 big macs +1 american flag + 1,3 freedom
i mean when the system of measurements literally uses physical quantities to define constants it makes sense. a foot is the size of a foot. a yard is the distance from your eye to your outstretched thumb. and its not like metric is free from sin either when celsius goes by boiling and melting point of water, which is not constant at different pressures or with any impurities.
@@niklimnat1061 Ah yes, that constant metric, a human foot that might come in different sizes, or a an entire arm, that can change from person to person
@@niklimnat1061 Celsius defined the 0 as the freezing point of water since its dépendance with pressure is almost irrelevant, and the 100 is specifically defined as "thé boiling point of water at sea level and normal conditions of pressure and température" Cause thats accurate, AND THE SIZE OF A FUCKING FOOT IS NOT
I think the title should be "Converting units of a recipe is a bad idea"
No it isn't a controversial clickbaitty title. Edit: i meant to imply the word enough thank you.
@SigmayerStillClosed He's a journalist so it all makes sense LOL
@SigmayerStillClosed that's the goal of the video it seem
@SigmayerStillClosed no it isnt and it doesnt. this title is only misconstrued if you dont understand how sentences are supposed to be written/misread it because you're mad other measurement systems exist. its very clear that its it's a partial sentence with the continuation of it being what he says in the video. the ONLY thing that would be "controversial" or "clickbaity" would be the people who get angry when someone says that other measurement systems exist and in their hysterical rage they misread the title as "metric recipes are the problem" when thats not what it says at all because the ORDER of the words drastically change the meaning of them.
-starting a sentence and finishing it with the video is NOT clickbait.
-using a sentence that is either irrelevant to the video OR is only used in a small section of the video because you know it will get people to click on it IS clickbait.
the video cannot be clickbait if the ENTIRE VIDEO is about the title because clickbait means that its misleading /false IE lying about something in the title/ not actually having the majority of the video be about the topic with minor exceptions for say news example being tech news videos where they cover lots of the latest things but will title the video *insert big news thing here* *insert brand and title of series and date here*
and its just not controversial at all. if "hey guys converting my recipes to a different measurement system makes it kinda hard for you to buy/use the ingredients in the amounts you need" is a controversy you would have to be the most bored person on the entire planet to have to make that your fight (not saying you are just the people who ive seen actually get offended over people using a different system of measurement for things)
sorry that you think his videos are wrong but they're meant to be his take on a topic/idea and the recipes are supposed to be the recipes he uses and likes.
Derrick Nguyen Not as many maybe but ist isnt a lie
You could literally ask for a half kilo at the grocery store and they will just change the unit on the scale. You're 1 button press away from the elusive 500g.
But then he couldn't make a video complaining about this
That is if you buy things in bulk/by the score (not a native English speaker), but he's talking about the packages that have a fixed amount of ingredients, like how meat or pasta is sold in round numbers that get screwed up in the conversion, and also that the recipes are made based on those numbers (usually the quantity of the main ingredient) just for convenience.
Did you actually watch the video? I can't think you have, since he addresses this. It's not just meat, but also prepackaged goods that are sold in fixed quantities.
Butchers aren't as common as you think it is in America sorry friend
@@drkamikaze1 You can't press a button to change the unit on the box of pasta, can you? It doesn't magically change size (and cost) to get rid of needing just slightly more or just slightly less than the quantity that you can buy in one container.
What I found most interesting in this video was considering a box of pasta as a fixed unit. Not because it's wrong but simply because I'm not used to that. My family typically buys pasta, rice and other dry food package free, so for me pasta is more like water in that sense. I don't buy a fixed amount. I just have a large container from which I take however much I need and I can easily be exact in that and take 453 or however many grams without worrying about some useless leftovers. Similarly, I expect that some people buy their vegetables as a whole where they don't have control over the exact quantities. They won't have x grams of sweet potato but instead they'll just have one whole sweet potato. Some households might have more use for leftovers than others.
I don't want to say anything specific, I just found it interesting that this problem affects different households to different degrees.
I do too. And I have a jar of random pasta shape left-overs that get made into pasta bakes every couple of weeks when you accumulate enough from the bottoms of boxes and bags. In any case once I've made a recipe more than a couple of times I tend to know which elements are "critical" and ones that just need eyeballing. In most cases the actual quantity of an ingredient can be upto 10% out without really effecting the outcome if you sample and adjust the other more easily varied ingredients like seasonings and spices.
I don't do package-free (though that is a good thing, there is just no fitting store nearby and having to move through half the city to save some packaging kinda defeats the purpose), but I still never considered a package as a fixed size (unless it is something that goes bad really quickly).
The thing is, the package sizes vary a lot too. If I buy a package of cream cheese, for example, the package size might be 200g, 250g, 300g, 500g or 750g, depending on store and brand. It would hardly be possible to buy stuff for a recipe and perfectly nail all the package sizes.
This gets worse if you scale recipes. The recipe might be for 3 servings, but if I have 4 mouths to feed, I'll have to adjust it. And even if the original recipe calls for the exact 250g package I get at the store, the scaled recipe would ask for 333.33g, which I will certainly not get.
This is the way
this. I was shocked at that
It is wrong. Pasta in US comes in everything from 7 oz do 2lbs.
American recipe: now add 1 cup of ingredient.
Me: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN. CUPS COME IN DIFFERENT SIZES.
I never use recipes with spoons etc to avoid this problem 🤣
Actually, it's pretty normal that I will measure things by the coffee-mug.
@@theojf1985 same, i focus more on the ratio of ingredients rather than the actual measurements
wHy DoNt YoU jUsT cOnVeRt It?!?!?!!!1111
@@dziooooo what I did is I looked up how much is in a spoon.
“Why I convert my entire recipes, not my units.”
High level comedy
I understood that reference
Lol it still makes sense tho
👌Nice
I guess this problem is why the metric system was created, to have a common basis for conversion of "round" numbers
Fun fact: Home ovens' thermostats are fluctuating the temperature ±10% and they are not that precise to begin with. Setting your oven to bake at 350°F vs 356°F (i.e. 180°C) doesn't make any appreciable difference.
it would still affect the average temperature
The problem is, many recipes in Europe call for higher temperature, for example, some baked goods require 220 degrees celsius.
@@xela4183 Which is not that absurd a temperature. 350 F is just a generic temperature. Sometimes, you want 450 F. Sometimes, you want 220F.
@@snowwsquire no two ovens cook exactly the same either. I have first-hand experience what does sedative side-by-side commercial ovens. One of them is 25 degrees too hot. Even when I compensate for the one that's too hot, and I put one pan of cookies in each of them at the same time more accurate one still cooks a little quicker than the one that's 25 degrees too hot. I've tested both these ovens with an oven thermometer.
The problem with US recipes is that they are volumetric, which is insanely inaccurate. So notice that you arent just converting to metric, you're also converting to mass from volume.
@Gabriel Klenner it also makes recipes harder(ie have to sift the flour, compress the brown sugar)
@@Theinatoriinator A valid point. That's also why it's considered bad practice to use a liquid measuring cup to measure dry ingredients. When you want to precisely measure a dry ingredient, a common way to do it is to overfill, then use the back of a butter knife to shave off the excess. With a liquid measuring cup, there isn't a simple way to flatten the ingredents without compressing them.
Indeed. The volume may differ because several factors. For example, 1 tbs of pepper won't have the same volume as if its grounded.
Right! I have no problem with recipes in pounds or ounces but cups are a nightmare (especially for flour and icing sugar)
Agreed, volumetric is awful. Sure, one can just aquire a cup and make anything with enough accuracy (and the more skilled the chef, the less of a problem this poses), but ingredients like flour, coffee, sugar etc can be milled/ground to different sizes of granules. A cup of course ground coffee will be significantly lighter than a cup of fine ground coffee.
rest of the world or as Adam would call it “Brits”
I mean there are only like 3 countries right? America, the brits and China..
i mean unless they call trash cans the bin in south america i dont see the problem
ok, so now i am european but not in the EU, how do i get to EU status without moving to europe?
@@grafmecx2641 you forgot mexico (every spanish speaker country) and pacifists (sorry mate)
@@oumardiop1 los llamamos tarros de basura, asi que es literalmente 'trash cans', pero tambien basureros, lo cual seria algo como 'bin', asi que tenemos ambas formas
This from a european, writing in metrics is for shopping, so you know how much you need to buy. We dont measure in the kitchen like psycopaths.
Except while baking. That's science for all I know.
Yep! I bake so often that sometimes in discussion about cooking, I forget that they aren't talking about baking. It's a huge science and when it comes to looking up recipes, I always looking for one in gram because I WILL measure that thing down to the 467 grams it asks for 😅 but when I cook, I look up several recipes, and combine all the ideas by eyeballing everything.
How to adapt to the egg though? Or adapt egg to?
Asking as a totally ignorant baked goods consumer😅😋
@@havvagokce1441 mix up the egg and pour in however much egg you need, then cook the rest for breakfast or something
@@zwero7703 😲🤓😄👍🤗
Ah yes, measuring out the amount if water you need from the sink is for psychopaths. The real pure European cooks buy the size of bottled water they need from the local Tesco…
Really? That’s your thought process? You people are insane
7:55 In Switzerland, a tablespoon is whatever size the tablespoons in your cutlery drawer have. Though you have to pay attention whether the recipe asks for a flat or heaped tablespoon.
That's the rest of the world as well. I've always found it strange to call those specific measuring spoons just "tablespoons" or "teaspoons". Like why even bother calling it that when it's blatantly obvious that you aren't actually using anything close to real spoons.
Edit: Same thing with cups. Although there does seem to be somewhat of a "standard" cup volume where I live, the cups and glasses I have in my house vary in size, so I can't just assume that "1 cup" means ANY 1 cup in my house. The last time I did assume that (out of laziness), a cake I was baking ended up so undersweet it was barely edible.
Virgin homecook: 300ml of milk
Chad Polish Grandma: a bowl of milk (the blue one)
Yes.
Any grandma is just as chad, but Polish grandma's have 10 more chad points.
incel and alt right memes have reached adam regusea, epic
@@officialreek I don't care who created a template. I just wanted some people to smile that's it.
@@Magarr subbed to paul joseph watson, what a fucking loser lol
The only solution: the us needs to switch to metric
You. Are. Wrong. LOL we will never!
@@SDSBBQs exactly! murica, fuck yeah! 🇺🇲
@@scenicdepictionsofchicagolife imagine acting all patriotic by not changing to the metric system xdddd
SDSBBQ I’m sorry but your wrong in way more ways why do u guys even use it when like 2 other countries use and the numbers are off
@@SDSBBQs you guys understand the whole world used the metric system right ?
ngl I feel like it's borderline nonsense to suggest such small differences would end up mattering for cooking. It's something you can mostly do just by feel and even a 10% difference usually won't be noticeable. For baking, absolutely, but you're working more with ingredients where you're set up for precise measurements anyway and don't run into the package size issue as much and when you do it's usually something that is easy to also use for something else.
Funny Southern U.S. family story about “cups”. No one in the family could make my grandma’s southern cornbread like she could, even though we all had “the recipe”. I asked her one time to SHOW me how she made it so I could figure out what I was doing wrong. Turns out, her 1 “cup” of flour and 1-1/2 “cup” of cornmeal were one of the teacups she got as a wedding present in 1946!
If your oven can keep a 6-degree temperature range accurately it needs to be in a museum of oddities.
Truly a wonder of the world
Hell yeah, the gas oven I own overshoots by about 70 F upon startup to get to temperature faster. So if the setting is 350 F, it overshoots to around 420 F and it takes about 4 minutes to fall back to 350. Then when it comes back down to the desired temperature, it has a hysteresis band of about 25 degrees F.
When I worked in a microbiology lab, some of our incubators kept to within +/- 0.5 Celsius, 24/7. (I usually checked the data loggers myself, and calibrated them.) You PAY for that level of precision...you also have to keep the door shut.
@@petermirtitsch1235 You were using home ovens as incubators?
@@Jkirek_ nope. As I said, you used precisely calibrated incubators, and PAID for that level of precision. Home ovens fluctuate quite a bit, even between shelves or shelf position.
Wait till he realises that like all cooks, Gordon is actually just eyeballing all these measurements and the recipe is all rounded up estimates of what he really used anyway.
Precise measurements have their place in things like baking, scaling recipes up several times thereby compounding rounding errors, and in restaurants where repeatability and cost control is important.
you need a reference though. anyone with half a brain cell knows that. if i eyeball 1 cup it will not be the same as eyeballing 4 cups. the quantity matters as a reference. precise measurements do matter especially in baking. not all cooking recipes need to be precise but baking recipes usually do. there is a lot of science behind baking and if you put a little too much of something in the batter, it can have dramatic consequences.
@@awesome7732 shepherd's pie is not a pastry. Most recipes just say things like "three medium sized onions", and those onion are always going to be different, despite all being "medium sized".
@@prosquatter read the first four words of my comment dude
Ingredient variation is going to change what you do somewhat anyhow. Rule: taste, taste, taste! th-cam.com/video/dLO_XJBYjEQ/w-d-xo.html
‘The Brits call it minced even though it’s ground’? Oh dear! The Brits call it minced because it is. Meat is not ground. Wheat is dried and ground for flour, coffee beans are dried and ground into coffee grounds. Get it? Dried goods are ground. Meat is minced.
Ground beef is a dried good?
@@RPanda3S That’s not what he said, dried goods GET ground, meat GETS minced.
@@Canalcoholic I think I was making a bad joke
Calls his video "problem with metric recipes", then lists problems entirely caused by exotic imperial measurements and package sizes.
I watched the entire clip and tried to give him some credit but overall it's just so pointless. I didn't intend to, but I just turned more infuriated as to how aggressively turbo-American this production is, despite coming from a pretty good chef. Video can be summarized "TL;DR American keeps adherence to imprecise medieval units that translate laughably into each other, and then gets frustrated when confronted with inevitable conversions outside his shell".
Look man, if some things are inefficient in my bubble and there's an outside framework where they make more sense, I adapt and drop my previous ways. There's no problem or shame in doing that. In my country we already have OSs like Windows, Android, iOS and so on completely translated, and yet it's so forced and weird sounding that when it comes to technology I've just stayed with English my whole life. However, if I were Adam Ragusea, I would keep my Windows and Gmail in ridiculously bureaucraticly translated Romanian and then throw a tantrum whenever I would try to follow an installation guide, because AAARGH the names are different and the actions have false friends and they may point to different locations 😤😠🤬
Like what's the actual problem here? I get his bottom line, but just do the conversions then, really. It's not that deep. And actually, this whole schtick doesn't even call for a video at all. The only interesting discussion point raised in the video id at the very end, where he proposes the idea of historically differing food just dur to different measuring systems. Outside of that, the whole video could have not existed at all and it wouldn't have made any difference, except for other Americans who were already pissed off at the horrible realization that sometimes things are not the same everywhere always forever.
You're cooking with 454g of meat? Fine, 500/454 ≈ 1.101. Just round it up to 500 and increase all other quantities by 10%. Or keep it at 454g, and then reduce all other quantities to 90.8% of their mass. It takes you 30s with the Windows calculator or browser address bar. And no, nobody will cry if they're left with 50 pieces of pasta in their pantry. Just use them the next time. We all have to do some calculations or rehashes when we cook anyway.
What's next? American ovens work with fixed presets, out of which one is 350°F ≈ 176°C, instead of 180°C? Fine, go with that then. If 4 goddamn degrees actually make a difference to your cooking, it means you aren't cooking, you're doing food chemistry, and the place where you belong is a lab or professional kitchen, not your studio kitchen with a discount oven that gives you either nothing or 350°F.
You do realize the figure of 180°C was also historically chosen just because it happens to be a round number in our decimal system that was close enough to what made cooking turn out fine most of the times, right? That's why it stayed, among other ballpark figures like 200°C, 150°C and so on. Do you really think people in regular households in Europe throughout the last centuries had access to scientific thermometers, and THAT is how the people passed down the recipes? Yea, everything just happened to be cooked perfectly at exactly 150.00, 180.00, 200.00, and 220.00°C, and nothing else. Amazing coincidence. Surely if the hands-on reality had been different, nowadays we would see mommy blogs going "Turn the oven to the standard 183.587°C. Right, Adam? 🙃 Jesus, did you think critically a little before you jumped in the temp argument of your video?
And finally, the fucking hurr durr sneak disses at the Brits. U w0t m8 💀? Coming from you, American man in his 30s that shakes fist at cloud because he has to do 2nd grade math for bolognese? In this context?!? Do you hear yourself? That was the icing on the cake for me.
I played the video with the most neutral and even sympathysing intentions (since I'm following the guy already and like some of his cooking videos) and ended up consistently like "wtf man are you fr rn 💀?" It's hard to grind my gears online but this one pulled it off for me. I was pissed off but now I'm amused at the whole situation, like I think it gets funnier the more you watch it. Maybe even get a few European buddies, some popcorn, and play this on the big screen like Americans would with cringe compilations. Fun nights.
Come to think of it, maybe this was the intention all along. Maybe Adam knows exactly what he's doing and this video is pure 100% orchastrated disgenuine clickbait. Case in which, hats off. But I doubt it 😄
problem for Americans yes, rest of world happy use metrics . In general trivial problem , buy 1kg bag and use how much you want , if its 500g use that if its 434g use that whatever lol .
@@isaacionescu3559 i couldn't say better myself. Thanks! I needed this comment so bad
@@isaacionescu3559 its actually not imprecise, its just not a decimalized system. its equally as precise. saying its imprecise is like saying 12/12 is imprecise but 10/10 is precise when they both just mean one whole of something.
@@midshipman8654 when I made that comment calling the greater map of imperial units imprecise, trust me that the duodecimal division is not the first reason that came to mind 🤓
If we're talking precision, in a vacuum, it shouldn't matter if you consistently divide units into 12 or 10 slots. But in real life, this obviously translates poorly for us due to being raised in and accustomed to the decimal system. And if you by any chance think non-decimal systems are just as handy, you should spend one week splitting units into 12 (meaning 3 and a half will be 3.6 instead of 3.5 and so on), and see how smooth that experiment goes.
So yes, like I said above, a system that breaks down in levels of 12 units are for no reason less precise than one that segments into 10 or any other arbitrary number of units. But my point isn't that, it's about the network of relations between all those units. They're all over the place.
I just had a flashback from Harry Potter where Hagrid explains the wizard world currency to Harry: "29 Knuts in one Sickle and 17 Sickles make a Galleon" (all prime numbers too if you notice lol). When I saw that bit as a youngster I laughed thinking this could only be the author's way of mocking real British money; but looking back, it's likely an even greater jab at the entirety of imperial system(s) still being in place.
Doing conversions for imperial means that volume, weight, length, and so on, are aggressively inconsistent from one to another, and furthermore, even inconsistent within their constituent units. It's so absolutely insane. If you don't have ultra fast 160IQ mathematical processing memory, you need 3 calculators just to figure out how much flour to pour, for what weight, into how much water. It takes the antics of a mad scientist when homie's just trying to make bread.
Meanwhile, the standardized metric system literally just scales by units of 10 IN ALL DIRECTIONS (up and down, but ALSO between units of differing measures). All across the board. It's that easy. You just multiply and divide by powers of 10. You literally just move the comma around bro, for real. And yea, "just moving the comma" would also be the required minimum, if: A) all the units in the imperial map were duodecimal divisions of each other, and B) if our wider numbering system was standardized in 12-base [aka going 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b]. Sadly, neither of these two are true.
Almost the entire world besides the USA switched to metric for a good reason as it became standardized. Even the originators that the Americans inherited it from have done a better job at renouncing it and integrating more with metric. The imperial system is just a collection of completely different random eyeballed gauges, from different places and eras, all mashed together on one big chart going: "ok now convert us 😁". Each of them must have initially made sense locally, as it's still fairly intuitive to think of 1 foot as having 12 inches, and a yard, 3 feet. But obviously, this stuff comes from times when people were using their actual body parts as a way to approximate measurements in the outside world (hence the names); also, they needed it for stuff like building a house - and not the accurate, scalable measurements like the ones we require today. Just imagine if CERN defined the speed of subatomic particles in nautical miles.
The rest of the world moved on from imperial for the same reason we no longer make use of Britain linkboys to light our way back home with a torch after the debut of street lighting. The reason why America refuses to get in line must be due to its huge size, difficulty with communication and establishing accord between states, and so on. The imperial units are taught to people who then grow to see them as natural, and pass it on, again and again, in a self-perpetuating inertia. Otherwise, I can't find any sane reason for why a nation would choose to hold on for dear life to such a headache-inducing clusterfuck periodic table just to cook dinner. All this time you could be literally moving a comma around.
I rate this video five swimming pools out of nine american football fields.
Please stop calling "the rest of the world" Brits.
As a Brit, I agree
Get with the times kiddo.
I rate it 4 polygon sides out of 6. Hexagons are the bestagons.
As an Iranian (born and living), i am a Brit :)
But half of his viewers are british....he knows his audience
This is the Most American title i have ever seen
Same
more american than diabetes
@@alenasenie6928 we the 12th most obese country. Meaning there is 11 countries fatter than us 😏
He talks about how it’s bad for the metric and customary way
@@philtheboi358 tbf, those 11 countries have way lower population than the us, and the way u find the obesity is by rates. if a country has 35% obesity rate and has 250 million population rather than a country that has 62% obesity rate and has 5 million population, its not really fair.
The sheer lack of accuracy in the average oven's temperature control mechanism probably blows away a 6 degree difference in conventional baking temperatures...
And the lack of consistency in ingredients too.
To take his Mac and cheese example, the variance in flavor/salt content between the cheddar I like in my mac and the cheddar you like in yours is greater than the variance that could come with any errors in scaling the recipe up 10% to go from 450 grams to 500 grams.
Amen. Your oven doesn't hit the temp on the thermostat perfectly anyway, and the variance is usually at around 10 degrees C.
Not really. The difference between units is a systematic difference with a bias in one direction. So in average, with that temperature, there is a bias towards cooler temperature in the US.
If you converted between F and C with a dice roll you'd have a point.
@@TheJohnreeves The bias may be in one direction for like one pair of converted temps, but I’ve cooked at 325, 350, 375, 425, etc. and the “normal” Celsius substitutes for those aren’t always off in the same direction or by the same amount. When you factor in variances in the ovens and the nature of most of their temperature feedback systems, it’s pretty much a wash. 350 on my oven and your oven are probably further apart than the 3.4 deg difference between it and 180C.
@@KeeganDent But those differences are all systematic too! That's the point. Any dish which is always cooked at the same temperature will be off in the same direction, whatever that is. So for 180, anything that is meant to be cooked at 180 will be cooked a little bit cooler when converted to 350. Others would be warmer, it depends on the temperature. But the difference would always be in the same direction for a given recipe.
The variances between ovens or their feedback systems don't matter. They literally matter not at all. Because they're still aiming for a particular temperature when they make the things. 350 is meant to be 350. If a metric version is trying to be 180, it's going to be hotter *on average*, meaning *on average* a recipe is cooked at a hotter temperature.
The point isn't that it's this huge massive difference, just interesting that it's there. One thing is for sure though, the differences aren't "a wash".
"Noone wants an almost empty bag of pasta" my ass. Imagine not making pasta on a daily basis where one just opens a new package of it every time the previous one runs out
Seems like my life tho
The rest of the world's annoyance with American recipes explained.
bruh i searched up a recipe for snickerdoodle cookies and i was getting the ingredients and i wanted to know the amounts. (I dont live in the US btw) There was a button that said, *Convert to Metric*, so i clicked on it
it displayed all the amounts in milliliters.
Who the hell wants to use American recipes anyways?
@@mrjakobt Most recipes online are not in metric and American blogs dominate.
@@notverysur3rightnow145 yeah, have you seen them make rice? Just ask uncle Roger.
@@zone07 uncle Roger approves
You’re going to hate a 19th century recipe that I read that said:
A sufficiency water
A handful of herbs
A leg of mutton
I have my great grandmothrrs recipe book which calls for a breakfast cup of water, very wet.
Over on the Townsends channel, they do a lot of 18th century cooking (mostly North American, but occasionally from elsewhere), and boy oh boy, often times measurements are not given at all in those olde receipts, not even in those kinds of vague, hand-waving kind of ways! But it is entertaining where you have a long list of ingredients with no quantities or vague quantities, and then they will have one, and only one, ingredient that is extremely precise, like "half a gill of brandy". Eh?
And indeed, there are plenty of ingredients which the modern chef wouldn't necessarily know what is being referred to without plenty of background. "A bundle of sweet herbs", which is going to be things like parsley and thyme and marjoram. It could be any collection of such herbs, they don't specify which ones or in what quantities or proportions, it's all left to taste, assuming you know which herbs even qualify as "sweet" to begin with. Or "forcemeat", which today we would probably use ground/minced meat instead. But they won't tell you what kind of meat to use, it's just whatever you have on hand that makes sense for the recipe in question. So many of those recipes require very considerable amounts of interpretation!
Honestly, that might be the superior way to write them. It forces you to do the conversion into units relative to each other in quantities that make sense to what is available to you. It would accomplish the thing he is talking about.
As an american, I've learned to love the metric system. It's best for baking. I use a kitchen scale, grab a bowl and tare the ingredients as I put something new into the bowl. The kitchen scale keeps me from having to wash a bunch of measuring spoons and cups. For the extra ingredients I have airtight storage to put them in. Oven measurements are easy conversions.
As an American, who studied physics and now lives in Europe - go you :DD
I don't feel like this is such a big deal as you're making it 🤣🤣 I never throw any leftovers away even if they're small I'll always find a way to incorporate it into something else
I think he said it because he knows thay some people WILL throw it away, wether it's a little leftover or not, you may not throw it away and know how to use it again no matter how small but other people might just throw it away because they don't see the point to keep it around or don't know how to integrate it in their next cooking.
Well you do 😅 good for you 🙃
Congrats lol
@@realchiknuggets thanks! hope to see more people follow suit
"The problem with metric recipes: I was born in the US"
Chokes he’s so cringy he wants to be British so bad
You didn't watch the video, did you?
@@biggame7041 Oh, ok, sorry. "The problem with metric recipes: stores don't sell the exact same quantities of ingredients absolutely everywhere". Also, since when do metric countries use milliliters instead of cups and grams instead of spoons?
No, it's more like "The problem with metric recipes: converting from metric to imperial just doesn't work"
@@Maggotbone "since when do metric countries use milliliters instead of cups and grams instead of spoons?" - That's the case though. Metric countries do use ml and grams instead of cups and spoons. That's partly what makes metric recipes easier to follow
"I'm gonna stick the rest of this into the refrigerator so I can throw it away in 3-5 weeks" might be the most accurate description of cooking with stock at home ever.
daniel. That’s why it’s better to buy stock cubes, that lasts for ever
Or you can just make your own stock and keep most of it frozen
ye can't you just freeze the rest and use it when you need it
I make soup a lot and keep normally use 1 1/2 things of stock cuz thats what feeds the fam with leftovers. I buy 3 things at a time to plan for that lol
Just add the stock to random stuff. Problem solved. It's literally an ingredient you can add to anything for no particular reason.
He says it best himself with his exiting statement: "It shouldn't matter that much because the better way to use someone's recipe is always as a starting point [...] make it work with whatever you have".
That only works with experienced cooks who are familiar with the style of cooking of the recipe, otherwise you really need to closely follow a good recipe at least once or it'll end badly
Apart from the whole metric vs imperial I think there's some problems with the whole debate here. Whole containers of food is a pretty useless concept. I never ever cooked a whole bag of rice, pasta or anything for this to be a problem. And even if you don't like having a box of pasta with not enought pasta to make a full meal you can always open another box. This is aparticularly weak argument when you take in consideration different family sizes, my family used to consist of 4 people, then went to 3 and later to 2 and now I live by myself. So recipes that call for a whole container of anything would be pretty useless in any of those scenarios (unless someone is willing to argue that a default family size is 4 people) and that's not even considering the appetite of those people.
For me, recipes are always just a starting point, if it's in metric or imperial it doesn't mean much. if you have a basic understanding of quantities in the kitchen you wouldn't have many problems regardless of the system of measurement used. But if you are new to the kitchen, the system of measurement will probably be the least of your problems. Especially if you are following recipes blindly.
I'm from germany, and i'm fine with rough conversions between the two. I really really think that outside of baking, which is a science, gram exact measurements do not matter at all. I usually follow recipes i see online to the letter for the first time i make them. If a recipe calls for 433,6 grams of flour, i will use that the first time. But once i know how the recipe works, i will tweak stuff around anyway.
Eyeballing really is the best measurment
couldn't agree more, when you're not dependant on exact amounts to force a specific reaction or create a specific texture/consistency your recipe won't suffer all that much from conversion and adaptation. As a german, your will probably also have experienced that the ingredients aren't always the same, even though they're called the same and sometimes that leads to them behaving differently. People shouldn't worry as much and just try for themselves a lot of the time.
Svellsongur Once you have made cake a few times, its actually quite easy
Svellsongur experience is everything, just get cooking (or baking) and learn from your previous attempts... dont be scared to make mistakes, they are the most important part in learning to cook
Agreed, we all do this
If say the recipe says "to a rough dough" - I've got an idea what that should look like, and can tweak until it looks right.
But why hinder ourselves with "cups" *gutteral growl*
This isn't the metric system's fault though, it's the fault of the US still using imperial measurements.
@Some Dude They didnt switch, at the time they were colonized, the europeans were already using the metric system, the europeans left the US way before the metric system was invented
This is the best commercial for metric I've ever seen
Yes, This is a really frustrating aspect of worldwide cooking.
However, the ratios translate. Take your base unit (pasta for the mac'n'cheese, meat in pie, flour in bread) then express the rest as a percentage of that mass & let the user define their own units - it's mildly confusing the first time, but a powerful tool once you've converted it to your preferred base units - you literally take that ratio set, go "my box of pasta is 500g - the cheese is 46% of that," (500x0.46=230g) and so on. Worst part is converting for different volume & liquid measures if you use those.
I get it may not work that way for US units, but I'd be perfectly happy to see it become the go-to international standard, just because it eliminates all the measurements issues. Even in Metric countries, most recipes are still in older measurement units.
Or do your recipe, get the ratios, do a conversion, but give all three pieces of information so we can tweak for local variables.
It also makes recipes Much easier to resize & revise in general, for single set e cooking or big batch meals.
IE, I convert everything to weight, because it's much easier to have 2 scales (1 kitchen, 1 spice), then clean 2-3 bowls & mixer attachment, rather than a bowl, a measuring jug, 4-10 measuring spoons, & whatever else.
No, the ratio thing is not my idea, I found it on a Nadia Lo "white bread golden ratio 101" page while trying to redefine a no-yeast (sensitivities) bread recipe.
This works only if all the ingredients scale the same way.
When cooking with american recipes, I always convert the amount of sugar to grams and then divide it by three... Always comes out perfect
So true! I just leave it out completely unless it's a sweet dish like a cake. Americans have a sweet tooth
@@Mandragara that is soooo true. Before American recipes I've never heard of caramelizing onions with sugar for example. Just why would someone do that? I will never ever understand that.
Man, that reminds me when I bought some american baked beans can. Wasnt Heinz...was some other brand.
It felt so sticky and was so friggin sweet. Like the spoon was sticking a bit to the sauce. For me, as a german, it was to overwhelming.
But reading the american reviews...seems that people like them that way.
Just use as many grams as they call for tsp
Yea exactly, just because you wanna eat American style food it doesn't mean that you have to get diabetes
Now imagine being Canadian, where we're permanently stuck between both systems and have to go rogue
facts
For cooking, we're pretty much using the Imperial system for the recipes, but at the grocery stores it's all metric and fucks it all up lol.
Every single time I get a recipe that's in metric I lose my shit and have to waste time converting it.
Same with the uk. We feel you bro.
@@flashcat6665 I convert my imperial recipes to metric often enough. being able to switch between them on the fly is a skill I am glad I was taught
Nah, it's simple,
Weight is pounds unless it's heavy,
volume is litres unless it's cooking (except when it's a liquid when cooking, which is still litres [except when making mixed drinks, which is ounces])
distance is travel time, unless you're writing it, then it's kilometres, unless it's a short distance then it's feet, except when it's the height of something that isn't a person because that's metres, unless it's a really short distance, in which case it's cm.
heat is Celsius unless you're cooking, in which case the oven is the godless fahrenheit, but thermometres are still metric,
speed is km/hr, unless it's a casual "that was going a million miles an hour".
Easy.
But yeah it's fucked. It's like how spelling is British unless it's not.
Fun to give bastardized dimensions like "it's two inches by six centimetres" though.
I wondered recently what after inches is the next smaller unit. Fractions of an inch of course, but I found out there are units: "barleycorn" and "poppyseed".
Whoever invented this had some strange humor.
Oh they are happy enough to go to metric, see: the thou
You know, this wouldn't be an issue if Americans just adapted and started using metric by default. And also, people all over the world have struggled to use the horrible imperial system just to cook a recipe.
Virgin homecook: tries to follow the recipe exactly as it is
Chad homecook: adjusts the recipe however he wants
Some ingredients work but sometimes it fucks the recipe up.
People that has experience cooking will adjust it as needed. People that is trying for the first time will follow the exact recipe and still mess it up 😂
reality can be whatever i want
Interestingly, the facts that I'm European and almost all the recipes I get from the internet (no matter what region of the world they're from) come in imperial measurements, have taught me to just never measure anything at all and confidently eyeball every amount.
_"almost all the recipes I get from the internet (no matter what region of the world they're from) come in imperial measurements"_
That's interesting. That tells me that perhaps the Imperial (or more accurately, "U.S. Customary") units are easier to use in cooking because the units (e.g., teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces, and cups) are more appropriately sized for such use, as opposed to grams and milliliters, which are extremely small.
But you need not give up and never measure anything. Just use the measuring cups and spoons that are readily available at online stores like Amazon (if not at your local brick-and-mortar store). 😊
@@Milesco That's just not true, I live in Canada so I'm very used to converting because America refuses to work in anything but Imperial, meaning we have to learn both systems in school thoroughly. I'm able to visualize both systems pretty well and can tell you neither are any easier or more difficult, though metric is certainly more intuitive. The fact that the USA just has to be different is just annoying. And the reason recipes are mostly in Imperial measurements is because America dominates the English speaking Internet.
@@_EatCrow Ah, you young whippersnapper, what do *_you_* know? 😄
Just kiddin'. 😁 As for "more intuitive"....well, I guess it's a matter of what you're used to, and it sounds like you're more familiar with metric units. I grew up with U.S. Customary units, so of course that's what I'm more familiar and comfortable with.
But I do think Customary units work better for most everyday human-scale measurements, including (perhaps especially) in the field of cooking. Cups, fluid ounces, tablespoons and teaspoons are well-sized for cooking. Again, grams and milliliters are really too small. There are 454 grams in a pound, I mean _come on._ A cup, which ain't that big, is 237 ml. Those large numbers are definitely *less* practical (or "intuitive") than the smaller numbers that result from using ounces and cups.
@@_EatCrow As for the USA "having" to be different....well, it's not that we're _trying_ to be different -- it's just historical. We're merely using the same old units we've been using for hundreds of years. _Everybody else_ changed, not us! 😁
@@Milesco I would argue that the imperial system is objectively worse.
There is no single base number. This is the most trivial requirement for a good and coherent measurement system, and Imperial fails it. One foot is 12 inches while one inch is 16 sixteenths and one yard is three feet. Not to speak about chains, furlongs, miles and leagues which none follows a single base number. And no, 16 is not divisible by 3.
There is no connection between length, area, and volume. Repeat after me: An acre is the area of a rectangle whose length is one furlong and whose width is one chain . How is that in square units? And gallons and pints are even weirder. Not speaking of pecks, ounces and hogsheads.
There is no connection between length, time, temperature and weight. Christian Huygens originally suggested the length of one metre as the length of a seconds pendulum, which ties the length of metre to one second. Today the length of metre is defined by speed of light per second. The weight and temperature are bound to eack other with volume.
It is completely arbitrary. Okay, the base unit of length is a foot. Whose foot? And in which country? How is a pound defined? As a random lump of random metal? There were some 380 different “pounds” in use in Europe before the introduction of the Metric system.
It is based on no natural phenomena nor any natural constants. Which means the units can be falsified or altered at will, such as Queen Elizabeth I did with mile.
There are multiple units for same quantity which are used on measuring different stuffs. Cue pound avoirdupois for everyday stuffs and troy pound for precious metals and gunpowder.
There are separate dry volumes and liquid volumes. One liquid gallon is not the same volume as a dry gallon. Neither in the USA nor in the UK.
The quantities vary from country to another. One UK gallon is not the same as one US gallon.
There are multiple unrelated units for measuring the same quantity which are incompatible each other. E.g., cubic foot, pint, bushel, barrel.
There are multiple units which have the same name but are unrelated to each other. “Ounce” can mean US fluid ounce, UK fluid ounce, US dry ounce, UK dry ounce, avoirdupois weight ounce or troy weight ounce. How much does a 32 ounce water bottle weigh?
The unit conversions are ludicrous. Okay. how many liquid pints is one dry gallon?
They are hard to conceptualize. Can a table with width of 48 inches and height of 40 inches be hauled through a door of 3 feet 2 inches?
The system is next to impossible to work with sciences. When our professors wanted to have a brainfuck with us, they gave the quantities in Imperial units. Okay, pound is the unit of weight - which is a force. What is the pound-based unit of mass? It is slug. And how much is the mass of a slug? But if the pound is assumed to be the unit of mass, then the unit of force is poundal. How much is that in newtons?
It fucks up engineering for good. There is a reason why German engineering is a concept and Japanese engineering means quality and reliability. The same cannot be said of British engineering, and American engineering is a swear word in Europe.
The unit confusions are a norm. One relief mission by RAF to Malta went into grief as it was launched off the RN aircraft carriers. The distance was expressed in miles. But the Royal Navy used, of course, nautical miles, which are a tad longer than statute miles, and Spitfire had a notoriously short range…
You really cannot handle unit conversions without a calculator. How many millimetres there are in a a kilometre? Easy. 1000*1000 = 1,000,000. How many inches there are in a mile? Umm…
The second I began using a scale for coffee, I instantly wanted everything to be in grams.
Why? You can use a scale for ounces as well. A standard serving of coffee is 6 oz of water and a scoop of coffee grounds is usually around 0.5 oz.
How much ounces is a lb?
Ah yes, "1/2 a stick of butter", a classic unit of measurement everyone in the world can relate to.
Except, y'know, all the fucking countries who don't sell butter in sticks or, even in the ones that do, have varying sizes for said "sticks".
The cooks who just throw stuffs into the pan without measuring them:
"Pathetic."
As an asian, can relate
@@surrk1057 me too
Take a tiny knob of butter
Asians be like:
Africans:
this video could be named "My problem with imperial recipes" and it would be just the same
Except the like to dislike ratio.
@@typhoonzebra no, I feel like it would be about the same actually
The us system is not the imperial system but the queen anne system. Its pints are different volumes, for example.
There are Imperial recipes (that are less than 40 years old?) Where? Not in the US...we don't use Imperial.
@@bcubed72 yeah yeah potatoe potato
As someone who cooks using "yay much", I doubt it makes that much difference.
Now what DOES make a difference is using cayenne pepper instead of paprika because I didn't want to turn the light on in my kitchen because I had no curtains. But hey, it came out all right, and now that's how I make that soup all the time.
I did the same with some pie I made. Thought I took out the cinnamon instead. Sweet and spicy pie was extremely good.
@@Amirifiz That sounds like a great idea!
You are so great.
I'm a Aussie that lives in Germany trying to follow your recipes, what a headspinn.
All you need to do is say "about" before your measurements.
No one:
Adam: the B R I T S
Adam and Irish people have something in common haha
litteraly every video and being a brit i’m happy
@@Ro700Repeater "Why I fertilize my car, NOT my lawn"
Il pleut des côtes XDdD
the English
my method: one pound is 500g, one cup is 250ml, teaspoon is a spoon I use for sturring tea or coffee, tablespoon is a spoon I use for eating easy as that
How not to bake
@@hitachi4264 Eh, it's fine. Cooking isn't chemistry. 10% more or less doesn't make that much of a difference. Not to mention that you shouldn't be following recipes to the letter anyway.
@@DJDiarrhea exactly, I'm not retarded, if it's too dry I add more water, if it's not sweet enough I add more sugar etc I'm only being cautious when I'm using salt
Bless your soul! I do the same!
@@DJDiarrhea Cooking isn’t chemistry but baking is. It all relies on a reaction from the ingredients 🤔
I just enjoyed Adam!!! 😂🤣 Thanks for bringing some laughs to the table!! I'm American deciding to learn some metric measuring for cooking and this was so much fun to watch! 🥰
I think the fact that since recipes use quantities that make sure an entire package is consumed it often means that the exact quantity is not as important as you think
Everytime he says "brits" I feel noticed
mood
And then attacked
me too and i'm not even british.
uwu raguseaahr-senpai
Dr Ghost Duck I must ask about your avatar is it that ice cream guy from that one ad?
When american recepies say "cups", I allway strugle with wich cup should I use, the small tea one or the big coffe of the morning one
And mosty is ordinary 2dcl/200ml cup.
Usually a tea cup is equivalent. Or 250ml
@@8Jory and this is where fun begins, we have same recipe but different measurements.
@@vvvmarko
Yep. The 250ml I said is just what's on the measuring cup in my kitchen. I'm in Canada so I'm gonna assume that it's "American cups" that we use here since we're figuratively and literally attached to the states at the hip.
@@8Jory In my household I have this for measuring: shot glass 30ml, big shot glass 50ml, water glass/(cup) 200ml, small pint 330ml, pint 500ml, and 1-2l bottles. Mostly they are used for sweets, they require some precision. For every day savory dishes i don't need exact measure.
We use what we have for measuring, but most if the time we don't measure at all.
I study translation studies in Austria and am a really passionate home-cook. I kinda do conversion based on ratios, not on the exact weight. loved the notion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it seemed like you look at food through the same lens as i do 🤗
Ratios is how recipes (and basically all measurements) work traditionally. Everybody had basic units (e.g. some cup, some spoon) in their kitchen that were of comparable size to that of the neighbours in their kitchen and that was used to remember recipes. In a time before calculators etc simple ratios where what everybody could easily calculate in their head with. I have not done any in depth literature research on it, but if I had to guess this whole exact measurement thing is a trend of the last 25years and is a result of having basically every home "appliance" in digital. Younger folks (millennials and younger) seem to think more in absolute digits than in ratios. When I see "250g" in my head that literally translates to 1/4kg - that is how I vision this. Technology Connections (on his second channel Technology Connextras) had a wonderful observation about that he can read analog clocks more easily than digital ones for similar reasons.
@@tetsi0815 You are correct about it being a trend from the last 25 years. Here in Denmark, a lot of old cookbooks were rewritten so as to contain more accurate measurements. Originally they simply said stuff like "a teaspoon", "a handful" and so forth. And we are dealing with cookbooks with no more than 40 years of age.
I swear I could watch you 5-6 hours per day, everyday and never get bored.
The Whole World: Why cant you just be Normal?!
Ameriva: *screams out 2 oz of air*
Variation is normal.
Technically, the Brits were the one who invented it, we just haven't let go yet
@@GH-oi2jf being stupid isnt tho
We all use Arabic numerals for the most part what about language and mathematics is normal, dumb ass.
@@eliasaltenberg maybe that its widely used in the world? Your fucking pound or whatever makes no sense... what is it based on? ive heard an inch is based on 3 dried seeds of something im too lazy to google in a straight line or whatever the shit like how dumb are you ppl
When he calls the rest of the world Brits...
Given that 90% of people who whinge about America online ARE Brits, it's fitting.
bcubed72 not true at allllll.
THE SUN HAS NOT SET
He's just a little bit behind in world news
@@figgypudding1664 well, you actually do CARE since you're commenting on this video... *Edited since I incorrectly spelled 'care' :) If something is misspelled again please let me know.
I've just discovered your videos and they're scratching all the Alton Brown good eats itches I've had since that show was on when I was a kid. Love hearing about food in the context of science!
if your going to use a set amount of ingredients with some left over in the packet then seal it and use it later. is it really that hard?
I like old timey recipes. "Take a goodly amount of ox tongue..."
Lol
The best are old recipes that just leave out important steps or ingredients since they're just, idk, expecting the cooks to know?
"and serve it forth"
@@hecticscone it’s almost as if your “tasting history”
@@mrguy9283 hmmm yes...
3:45 Bro round up to 750 mL. Metric deals with 50s all the time.
And 3/4 of a liter is even more common of a measurement.
9 ml is basically nothing, so 700 is fine.
... And therefore the closest conversion is to 700 ml?
also, if you are significantly tweaking the amount of a key ingredient, like say, 10% extra pasta, you should also adjust ~all the other amounts proportionally~, so in this case, you'd need 3,3 cups of milk, or about 780mL. Now, you could just measure those 780, and if you bought a typical 1-liter carton you'd have a perfectly reasonable amount of milk left, or round it down to 3/4 of a liter, which is a very common measure in metric recipes, and is just ~4% less milk. Not a big deal.
Other than that, conversions are simple once you assume that a pound is 1/2 Kg, a cup is 1/4 L and a quart is a liter. You are just gonna end up with about 5 to 10 percent more stuff.
No one not cooking professionally or working on food science is ever gonna notice the difference, and if you are a professional you know how to deal with this stuff, and "how much is left in the container afterwards" is a much less important question.
(now, i'm talking about just simple cooking, baking is a whole different deal and you should measure well your stuff there, and you're probably better out seeking recipes written in the system you're working with rather than trying to do your own conversions)
I once found a recipe with different amounts of ingredients in spoons and cups. It was for 5 people. I wanted to cook it for two people and ended up with such numbers like 8/5 tablespoon or 4/5 cup.
And your point is?
well thats how cooking works
@@GH-oi2jf that it's ridiculous? how the fuck is 8/5 tablespoon an acceptable quantity to you
@@GH-oi2jf that measuring with such large base units is bad for scaling.
Recipe calls for 500 grams of whatever for 5 people and you want it for 6? Easy, just add 100 grams. Not as easy to add 2/5 of a cup. Or 2 tablespoons for 3 portions, if you want 4 portions you have to add 2/3 of a tablespoon, instead of just adding 10 grams. Or you have to live with not making the recipe as it's written, which most of the time is fine, but with more delicate recipes is a nightmare.
I am a single person and have no trouble using small bits of extras.
This is a non-existent problem for me.
American title: my problem with metric recipes
Title converted to metric : my problem with Gordon ramsay and brits
:DDDD
Ikr This guy has a problem with British people or something.
@@benjamin9120 Ehh, not really. People just want to feel offended.
@@Effect_FX Not really....
@@benjamin9120 Yes really.
in italy we are masters of finishing the bottoms of the pasta boxes, we mix all together, checking the different cooking times, done, sorted. kids love it because is a weird mix of random pasta, and it looks funny, it tastes all the same in the end, and you can also use scraps and leftovers from the fridge and make your own personal, unique, scrappy sauce- no waste- end of the month - skint af- random pasta.
Aww that’s such a cute idea for kids 🥺
You could also just get a second box of pasta (like you would have to do anyway) and then you don't have to worry about anything the next time you cook. I can't believe he was really pretending that having a few dry pasta sitting alone in your shelf is unbearable.
The pasta mix sounds like something kids would really like. Kinda like alphabet soup (that one is educational too).
I used to have the impression that italians are pretty strict with their pasta shape and sauce combinations and I am a bit reliefed that it isn't that serious.
The only minor hiccup with mixing different kinds of pasta together is that the cooking time may differ, leaving you with differently cooked bits of pasta in the end. Can be easily solved though by starting with the one that needs longest to cook and then adding the others after a few minutes, based on the difference in cooking time :)
@@flip148 yeah, exactly, that's what i meant with "checking the different cooking times"
@@christopherstein2024 we usually are, but to be honest every family thinks that their recipe is the best one lol
Food nazis are everywere now though, that got worse after tv chefs came on fashion..
Starting with shepherds pie, and ending with sheeple - beautiful circular composition right there.
As an Italian I don’t understand the problems with pasta, we all have 4-5 open boxes of different shapes of pastels hanging around at every moment, we weight the amount we want to cook leaving what is left in the box or opening a new one if there isn’t enough
How do you think we feel when we figure out a cup is an actual measurement?
You probably think "What a convenient and intuitive measurement system, perfectly on the scale of every day experience. I can easily see the history of how this developed. How charming!"
Am I right?
@@jayteegamble I actually prefer imperial recipes to metric for this reason. It's easy to understand how much each unit is because it's based on something tangible. You're going to use some type of vessel to measure your ingredients, so why not just name the measurements after than vessel? I also like having different units based on how large of a quantity you use. Spoons works for smaller, more precise ingredients, and cups is better larger ingredients. If I add an extra 5ml (a teaspoon) of water, I won't notice, but cayenne or even salt could ruin my meal, so it makes sense to use a different unit of measurement.
Edit: People have been sporadically replying to this comments for several months, so to address the common nitpicks I get: yes, I understand cups have different sizes. It's pretty easy to understand whether someone means a measuring cup or just a random drinking cup by the context. "Meter" can be an exact measurement, or a device to measure things, i.e. a thermometer, or speedometer.
Also, I understand that metric has some cool advantages and is overall the better measurement. That just doesn't help me, though, when I'm cooking. I've had a dozen replies explaining that 1 kg= 1000 grams. It obviously converts better between units, but how why does that matter for a recipe. when was the last time you had to multiply or divide a recipe in a factor of 1000,, a hundred, or even 10? Also you work in a massive food processing plant, you probably don't.
In conclusion, if you like metric, that's great, so do I. I'm from Canada, a mostly metric country. I just don't need a new TH-cam notification once a month of someone explaining how metric works, since it's something I already learned in second grade.
@@jayteegamble I actually think "wtf, I have five different cup sizes at home, how the hell am I meant to know what 1 cup is; growing up with metric, I actual struggle so hard to picture imperial sizes and because I'm not a visual learner I find it much easier to understand metric values than tangible things like cups or football courts; I'm literally just making some dessert for fun, I don't have any of these imperial measuring devices at home (I'm Chinese, we mainly just eyeball things) and because it's imperial I can't just grab an empty coke can or milk jug to compare the measurements because I live in fucking Australia where the measurements actually make scientific sense!"
@@iiiivvvv9986 A coke can is 1.5 cups! So 2/3rds of that bad boy is perfect for an eyeballing. Alternatively, if you like to follow American cooking stuff you can get a set of measuring cups. Amazon has some nice looking ones for $4.
@@jayteegamble again, you know what would be better than that? If we just used metric where everything makes sense
"This video is made by an American"
Thats good
It sure is.
@@aragusea Can you see where in the world your viewership lives? Do you have abundance of American viewers, or British viewers seeing as you mention the alternative names all the time?
Alexander Vestbjerg he can indeed
"This video is made by an upset dumdum"
T Russian word for "dark blue" is the general term for all blue, with lighter and darker shades either having their own words or being described i.e. you can say "светлая синяя" to express "light blue". Or at least, that's how it _should_ work based of how it works in most languages, most Slavic languages and my own native language(which is in the Slavic group).
That is why I cook the the "pretty hot oven" with about this much salt and a bunch of butter
Me in elementary school: America is switching to the metric system next year, so you had better learn it!
Me at almost 60: America and two tiny countries still use the imperial system...when are we gonna switch?
Most likely never. As USA wants to be diff from UK but Imperial was made by UK before UK switch to metric, so in conclusion, dunno.
When it makes practical sense to. If you need to use metric, you will. If you don't need to use metric, why do you need to switch?
@@augustkaiser7632 "UK switch to metric"... The Stone and the Mile would like a word...
@@nikolaibreckenridge2287 Mainly just to be the same as the rest of the world. No more need for conversions. Everybody on the same page. Also, it's a simpler system.
@@nikolaibreckenridge2287 It makes sense right now, anything is simpler when you have actual measurements instead of volumetric ones. NASA uses the metric system
His mind is really going to blow when he realises that eggs vary in size by more than the 10% extra pasta there was going to be, or that the accuracy on many oven thermostats is worse than that difference between 350F and 180C, or that all the vegetables we use in recipes often don't get weighed at all...
It was specifically addressed to the newbies that would not simply shrug and work the difference into the recipe but attempt to follow it exactly.
@@Mostlyharmless1985 Well the point is that it doesn't matter at all
@@theramendutchman Yes, that is the point. But people who are just learning how to cook won't know that.
Just read the pinned comment.
Q: Why are you getting so hung up on the relatively minor quantitative differences you're discussing in this video, when you're a noted advocate of eyeballing ingredients and of generally being un-fussy in the kitchen?
A: That's a fair question, and it's something I struggle with a lot. I really hope that most people who watch my recipe videos will just take the basic idea of the dish and then adapt it to their own needs, rather than follow it to the letter. And I reckon many (most?) do just that. However, I think the precise recipes I write in my descriptions are more likely to be followed by beginners, and I really worry about leading them astray. Therefore, if converting a recipe from U.S. units to metric causes any of the problems I discussed in this video, the people least able to roll with those punches are also the people most likely to be using the written recipes in the first place, which is why I worry.
so true
Also 180C is uncommon because our ovans scales are in 25C increments. Thus most recipes would call for 175C which is 347F making the difference even smaller.
I buy groceries in large package to save cost, so no matter I follow imperial or metic recipes, there will be leftovers that I have to put in shelf or freezer, I'm ok with it.
Love these thought trails, thank you for introducing me to the Ragusea phenomenon
I also have this problem when making dinner for 3 people, it’s easy to make the recipe for 2 and 4 people but not for 3
Just overdo it and send me the rest. I'll be your mysterious 4th... 5th... 6th... and so on. I'll also always say it was great so you can say "see, he liked it." Win/win for all.
Yeah I end up making 4 and eating the 4th the next day.
Just half the amount of two people and add it on to two people
Make the amount for 2 people 3 times and force feed them 2nd plate
Iluzon Linch: Area X what do you do when you need 1 tin of tomatos for 2 people, do i waste half of a tin or do i just make it less/more tomatoy
*Adam:* rages about difference between imperial and metric systems
*me:* looks at the pantry filled with half used packs of pasta
With a bunch of leftover pasta you can at least make some mixed noodle thingy and just throw them all together.
Dude in Europe we buy everything in bulk not just per recipe we need, and that has a few atwantages:
1. We don't have any leftovers, we just use what's left when we open the next box of pasta,
2. When we see a simple recipe online, 95% of the time we already have all of the ingredients we need
3. If you buy in bulk you can ussualy get stuff cheaper or buy them when they're on sale
Omg, all that video to that conclusion! Make it a poster with a inspiring quote!
I've lived in London all my life and never heard it called "macoroni cheese", I've always heard it with the "and"
Yeah I’ve never heard that either. Mac and Cheese all the way
Someone I know said ‘macaroni cheese’ so I took the piss out of them
I've lived in Manchester all my life and I've heard both. Maybe it's a north/south thing.
I'm from Manchester and I've never heard macaroni cheese either
I'm from Scotland and it's almost always "macaroni cheese" here, as far as I've seen.
My Taiwanese friend just tried to heat up our air fryer to 400 degrees after he found American recipe. He could not imagine that 400 degrees means Fahrenheit:)
rip air fryer
@@andrewliu6592 RIP Taiwanese apartment building.
rip whatever food he tried to put in that pot of straight up doom
Does air fryer even have 400°C?
@@quanganhvu6791 nope lol
As a brit I have never heard anyone say "Mac Cheese" its always "Mac and Chesse"
This is nit a problem with metric recipes, just a problem of the US not adapting to the rest of the world because of “well I have no idea really”
Adam: you don't need exact measurements because you cook for yourself and taste your food as you're cooking
Also Adam: if you put 10 more noodles in a pasta recipe you've ruined it
(I jest, don't kill me)
but this becomes a really annoying thing when you make modern desserts, because it tends to use extremely exact measurements, when you screw thigs by a ml or some tbsp it all goes to hell, and suddenly istead of a geleé you have a jus, so i can relate to that contradiction
@@terrorbrutal3926 and bread too. 1 gram difference of enzymes in 1kg overall recipe is the difference between great bread and a soup.
@@AuxHex yeah, this summer childs. And don't get me started with the amount of salt and other condiments such as pepper, you f**k a measurement of 'em and you are FIRED xD
Terror Brutal that’s why I got a scale for my baking needs and I still messed up my cinnamon rolls, luckily they turned out well in the end.
@@KJK9029 that's great, but the deeper point I'm trying to establish is that some things work proportionally and others by exact measure. And the video present this conundrum in the example of the pasta I believe, it is not always the same. In the end, shouldn't the North Americans just go with the rest of the world by following the metric system? I mean, it is clearly the right choice, given that is the system they use to put things in orbit. 🤷♂️
I love how he passively agressively attacks brits, even though most of the time the us is the weird one
this comment really made everyone think I'm british or american huh
most of the time ?
@@RyuMai it's just a fail safe in case he's actually right about something
That’s what you took from this?
🤦🏻♀️
@@TheresFuckeryAfoot did he say that is the only thing he took from it ?
@@TheresFuckeryAfoot no, it's not what I took from this. It's just a funny thing I noticed
And after all - recepy are never about numbers - it's about Proportions!
instead of metric weight use metric volume scales like desiliter and tablespoons?
"A guart of a jig of flute dissolved in a half fiddle tune of stock per boy-howdy of freedom meat"...
In canada, its the most messed up. When I buy meat, the price is displayed in "per pound", but the weight on the label of the meat im buying is in kilograms...
Whoa, now that keeps you on you toes. :-)
intentional, to present "cheap" prices ..
where i'm from it's normaly price per 1kg or 100g and nowhere aside of a butcher shop people measure in pound everything is g/kg and ofc L/ml OZ is just printed on when it's an internationaly sold product
But you're already rounding when making the recipe in the first place. Maybe 2.83 cups of an ingredient turns out better than 3 cups but that isn't worth the hassle so we just round instead.