Chaos in the Kitchen

Discussion in 'Make It So' started by NevermorePoe, Mar 30, 2016.

  1. vuatson

    vuatson [delurks]

    My job is basically just cutting high volumes of fruit, so I use knives kind of a lot, and as far as I can tell the best way to avoid joint pain is to make sure your knives are really sharp. The sharper they are, the less force you have to use to cut the thing, and so less stress gets put on your wrist. Unfortunately there isn't really a perfect way to hold the knife (that I've been able to find, anyway) but using your whole arm instead of just your wrist is good too. Focus on keeping your wrist still and moving from the shoulder. This can tire your arm out, though. Also! If you don't need your free hand to hold whatever you're cutting still, use it to brace and press down on the blade of the knife, so your handle-holding arm doesn't have to do all the work of exerting downward pressure.
     
    • Like x 3
  2. Deresto

    Deresto Foolish Mortal

    we had a mandoline at a summer camp i worked at in the kitchen, and it made me never wanna use a knife again. i especially love doing tomatoes because tomatoes are the devil to slice yourself:

    [​IMG]
     
    • Like x 2
  3. bornofthesea670

    bornofthesea670 Well-Known Member

    mandolines are magical, especially when you had to spend years practicing making perfect slices by hand

    i am so much better at cubes

    i can julienne and cube all day
     
    • Like x 2
  4. witchknights

    witchknights Bold Enchanter Defends The Fearful

    My slices are awful ): all uneven and I can never get the knife straight down so they're always sir of a /\ shape.
    It's really frustrating because I want to make pretty apple roses.
     
    • Like x 1
  5. NevermorePoe

    NevermorePoe Nevermore

    Remembered something to post here today, the cap on the crisco vegetable oil we buy is exactly 1 tablespoon, its the 48 oz size, which might or might not make a difference. Could save someone a dish when cleaning.
     
  6. NevermorePoe

    NevermorePoe Nevermore

    I can get the knife straight down, but i move either right or left and end up with pretty much the same problem, especially with thinner knives.

    [Edit:] we had one of these at work. It was really nice for slicing vegetables when I was working on the salad bar.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2016
  7. Aya-non

    Aya-non Well-Known Member

    I am going to post a thing I learned last night, which is, that a liquid measuring cup and a solid measuring cup are not the same size, and if you are measuring all the cups with the same measure you are Doing It Wrong.

    In case anyone else is like me, and did not figure this out on their own.
     
  8. NevermorePoe

    NevermorePoe Nevermore

    The only thing that can be measured the same in a solid and liquid cup is water. Also, the most accurate way to measure anything is by weight. Also, a chart showing how many of what measurement go into the each other. [LINK] Because I always forget. oh, and a tablespoon is equal to half an ounce for most measurements.
     
    • Like x 1
  9. Mercury

    Mercury Well-Known Member

    Now wait just a minute, here. While it's true that the most accurate measurements are made by weight (for dry goods), it is absolutely is not true that liquid and dry measuring cups measure different amounts. Measuring cups measure volume, which doesn't magically change based on the solidity of the substance. If it did, water couldn't possibly measure the same in both types of cup! (Also, no recipe I have ever made would turn out right since I use the same two measuring cups for everything, and yet I have zero trouble with that.)

    The actual difference between liquid and dry measuring cups is their shape. Cups for liquid have a pour spout and have a measure-to line below the top of the cup to prevent spillage; cups for dry goods measure right up to the top, for easy leveling.
     
    • Like x 1
  10. Aya-non

    Aya-non Well-Known Member

    Edited for coherence: Friend may have been wrong. Am not sure. Not really up to checking sources, will leave this to people who know what they are doing, AKA not me.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2016
  11. Mercury

    Mercury Well-Known Member

    Are you talking about conversion from different types of measures? Because that's another thing entirely - if you measure a dry good in a measuring cup that uses ounces, thinking it's also measuring the weight in ounces of the dry good, it's going to come out wrong, because a cup using ounces is using fluid ounces - which for the purposes of cooking is a measurement of volume, not a measurement of weight.

    (Good lord, I forgot how needlessly complicated Imperial measurements are...)
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2016
  12. Aya-non

    Aya-non Well-Known Member

    This is what she showed me: http://www.goodcooking.com/conversions/liq_dry.htm. I don't know if it's correct or not. Sorry for confusion. But it was specifically in reference to cups, liquid and dry, not ounces. I'm...kinda fried today, to be having this conversation, so I'm serious about the "leaving this to people who understand what even is cooking" part. I probably shouldn't have posted at all but I had a lapse of judgement.

    Still there's the link if you wanna examine the information I was given.
     
  13. NevermorePoe

    NevermorePoe Nevermore

    A quick test in my kitchen with a few different brands of measuring cups shows a difference of about 1-2 tablespoons fairly consistently. This could possibly be an error on the liquid measuring cup, as i only have one brand of those to test with, this seems somewhat unlikely as its Pyrex, which is a very good brand.
    mostly, i was repeating what i heard in school, a few years ago. I may have misremembered somewhat.
     
  14. Kaylotta

    Kaylotta Writer Trash

    in my experience, yes they differ, which is technically why you aren't supposed to measure liquid in solid and vice versa, BUT also in my experience it's never mattered enough to wreck anything. so I've always been kinda w/e on it. if I'm doing a recipe I've never done before, where I don't know what things should look like, i'll use liquid in liquid and dry in dry. but otherwise, meh.

    so: no worries @Aya-non, it's a good conversation to have! *hugs*
     
  15. Mercury

    Mercury Well-Known Member

    Where I'm coming from is that I never noticed any particular difference when I was using Imperial measures, and now that I'm using solely metric ones (because I moved to the other side of the world), a deciliter is a deciliter is a deciliter. You have to make sure not to measure past the top measuring line on a measuring cup with a lip for liquid, is all.

    I concede that there may well be a difference in liquid/dry Imperial measurement cups, but not enough to make a confusing and somewhat arbitrary rule out of to confuse new cooks with. At any rate, I didn't mean to insult you, @Aya-non, and I'm sorry I made you feel bad :(
     
    • Like x 1
  16. NevermorePoe

    NevermorePoe Nevermore

    now that i've eaten and gained a bit of focus, i think the biggest thing is its pretty difficult to accurately measure wet stuff in a dry cup, and dry stuff in a wet cup. like, measuring water in a 1 cup spills, and trying to measure flour in a wet cup means you have to shake it, tap it on the counter etc, which causes stuff like that to compact, which means you don't measure it right.
     
    • Like x 1
  17. Mercury

    Mercury Well-Known Member

    Well, 'have to' is highly variable, and packing of dry ingredients is still a risk in dry measure cups. Careful spooning in of anything other than sugar (which ime doesn't really pack down) is best practice regardless of what cup one uses.
     
  18. NevermorePoe

    NevermorePoe Nevermore

    I forgot to add " to level it" to the end of that have too, oops. yea, we have a scoop in our flour bin.
    [Edit:] bit brain foggy and scattered today, I don't think i'm articulating my posts very well, I agree with you. I parroted a teacher without using the brain.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2016
    • Like x 1
  19. Aya-non

    Aya-non Well-Known Member

    @Mercury , you didn't make me feel bad and I didn't think you were insulting me. All the "I don't know what I'm doing" things were supposed to be coming from me; I was attempting to disqualify myself from the conversation. I wasn't very articulate this morning, and I was kind of worked up emotionally over something else, so I wanted to calmly absent myself from the conversation because I knew I was overreacting to things--but I wasn't up to the "calm" part. I'm sorry about the misunderstandings that caused.

    I am going to ask the friend that told me the information in the first place where she got it, because now I'm curious. It's possible that since she doesn't just cook--she uses measuring cups for farm animal medications, too--she might have gotten the information she gave me in that context. If there is a difference between solid and liquid cups, but it isn't big enough to affect the outcome of most recipes, it might still be big enough to be a problem when measuring animal meds.

    In which case it isn't something we need to worry about with cooking, but there's still an explanation.
     
    • Like x 1
  20. Mercury

    Mercury Well-Known Member

    Whatever the case, the chart you linked to looks reasonable enough. Imperial measurements are just weird.
     
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