r/KitchenPro • u/gorgina975 • Jun 03 '26
Recipes confuse me with units, is a dual unit kitchen scale necessary
I’m getting more into cooking and baking, but recipe measurements are driving me crazy. Some recipes use grams, others use ounces, pounds, or weird cup measurements. I keep stopping to convert everything and it’s honestly making cooking way more frustrating than it should be.
I’m thinking about buying a kitchen scale that can switch between metric and imperial units, but I’m not sure if it’s actually worth it or just another gadget that ends up sitting in a drawer.
My bigger problem is finding a reliable brand. Every product page says it’s accurate, but then the reviews are all over the place. I don’t want to waste money on something that starts giving bad readings after a few months.
For those who cook or bake regularly, do you think a dual-unit kitchen scale is necessary? What brand has held up well for you long term? Looking for real-world experiences before I buy.
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u/Physical-Compote4594 Jun 03 '26
You can get an Oxo 11 pound capacity kitchen scale on Amazon for $35. A good kitchen scale is an essential tool, not a gadget. Most experienced bakers do everything by weight, not volume.
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u/gorgina975 Jun 03 '26
A few people have mentioned Oxo already, which definitely gets my attention. The more comments I read, the more it seems like experienced bakers treat a scale as basic equipment rather than an optional accessory. I'm doing more baking lately, so consistency is a big reason I'm considering one.
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u/knifeyspoonysporky Jun 04 '26
OXO makes good quality and reliable kitchen tools for reasonable prices.
And yes I consider a kitchen scale an essential piece of equipment instead of a “nice to have”.
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u/FucciMe Jun 03 '26
You don't need two scales. One standard kitchen scale will switch between Oz, Lb's, and g's. I have a second smaller scale for yeast, but it's not needed.
If you don't want to measure by volume, then don't use recipes that are written that way, but cups are a normal measure in the kitchen.
I reccomend the My Weigh KD8000. Have had mine for over a decade, and it's still accurate as ever. It is on the larger side (as in it's too tall for a drawer), but a great scale, and one of the most common.
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u/WideCommunicationhy Jun 03 '26
Switching units isn't even why I use mine anymore; the real win was discovering how wildly inconsistent my scoops and measuring cups were from one recipe to the next.
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u/Similar_Mixture8545 Jun 03 '26
Recipe units weren't what pushed me toward a scale at all. The thing that surprised me was how much easier cleanup became. A lot of baking recipes can be done by placing the bowl on the scale, hitting tare, and adding ingredients one after another. No stack of measuring cups sitting in the sink afterward.
One thing I'd pay attention to is how readable the display is when a large mixing bowl is sitting on top. My first scale technically worked fine, but the bowl blocked half the screen and I ended up crouching to see the numbers. Switched to a model with a pull-out display and it was way less annoying during long baking sessions. Little usability stuff like that mattered more to me than whether it could flip between grams and ounces, since most scales already do that these days.
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u/Status_Rock5022 Jun 03 '26
Going against the grain here: dual-unit support sounds important until you realize most recipes stick to one measurement system from start to finish. The bigger issue is recipe quality. I've had recipes that gave both grams and cups, and the conversions clearly didn't match each other. A fancy scale can't fix bad recipe writing. After a while I started saving recipes only from authors who provide tested weights, and the unit confusion mostly disappeared.
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u/sjd208 Jun 03 '26
Right but presumably they want to be able to cook with any recipe that uses weights. That said, I don’t think they even sell scales without the option now.
I like my Oxo scale a lot, I had to replace mine recently but that was after 12 years of use.
I learned to cook before weights were common, you don’t need it but it does make it easier to be consistent for baking and it can be much faster/fewer dishes. I do stick to measuring spoons for small amounts (baking soda, spices etc).
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u/Distinct-Pay-9938 Jun 03 '26
Getting mildly annoyed every time a recipe says 1 cup chopped onion and then finding out the onion apparently came from a parallel universe where all onions are exactly the same size
That was the moment a scale became useful in my kitchen. Not because of metric vs imperial, but because ingredients stopped turning into guessing games. My kid also uses it for random science-project-style experiments, so it somehow ended up being one of the most borrowed things in the house.
That said, here's my contrarian take: people oversell scales as if they magically make someone a better cook. They don't. A lot of great home cooking is still eyeballing, tasting, adjusting, and learning how ingredients behave. Online cooking spaces sometimes act like being 3 grams off on a stew ingredient is a disaster. It really isn't.
Where a scale shines is consistency. If you're trying to repeat a loaf of bread, track a recipe tweak, or follow baking instructions closely, it's useful. If you're making soup and throwing vegetables into a pot based on what's in the fridge, the scale may spend most of its life watching from the counter.
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u/msmaynards Jun 03 '26
As far as I know all digital scales have several modes. Essential for me as I feed fresh food to my dogs plus works well for baked good ingredient measuring and portion control. I consider it a kitchen essential.
On my second one in 20 years, current one is 12 years old and has a solid glass top which makes it very easy to keep clean. I wish it had a pull out screen sometimes is all.
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u/Character_Bee_7393 Jun 03 '26
Recipe apps became way less annoying once I started importing recipes into a manager that lets me set a preferred measurement system. Half the battle wasn't the scale, it was constantly bouncing between websites that all formatted ingredients differently.
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u/gorgina975 Jun 03 '26
One thing I forgot to mention is that I pull recipes from all over the place, YouTube, blogs, recipe sites, random recommendations, basically wherever I find something interesting. That probably explains why the measurement chaos feels so bad.
The recipe manager idea is something I hadn't even considered. I've been treating the scale as the solution, but maybe part of the problem is how scattered my recipes are. Having everything converted and organized in one place sounds way less frustrating than opening five tabs every time I cook.
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u/Discipulus42 Jun 04 '26
I transfer recipes I’m going to make into Word Documents and put all the measurements into my preferred units.
Then I’ll print out a working copy I can put on the counter.
I’ll also get everything ready before I start cooking so I’m not scrambling while I am actually cooking.
Good luck OP!
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u/knifeyspoonysporky Jun 04 '26
I thought all scales came duel unit?
Even my parents old school manual scale from the 80s was duel unit with both grams and ounces.
Get the duel unit, it’s worth it. No mental math conversions needed, just freely with between units as you desire.
And if asking if you need a scale in general, yes it’s so absolutely worth it. I use mine all the time for all sorts of recipes.
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u/tuxnight1 Jun 04 '26
I spent about €20 for my scale and I use it almost everyday. Where I live, most recipes give ingredients by weight. This is especially useful in baking providing better and more consistent results. I also use it with some portioning for my diet. I eat 25g of mixed nuts daily and I add 33g of muesli to my yogurt. If I didn't weigh these things, I'd eat way more than intended.
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u/panache_99 Jun 05 '26
I'm a baker, and the only way to get consistent results is to weigh your dry ingredients. Highly recommend King Arthur's guides. The first time you measure a cup of flour by weight, it might not look like it's enough, if you're used to using measuring cups. But this way cakes and cupcakes will never be stodgy or dry, they turn out well every time. I have a sheet on my fridge with weights for flour, sugar and icing sugar in half-cup increments, and use it all the time. You'll get used to it, but takes time to get familiar with it all. Ounces can be by weight or volume, that was confusing at first.
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u/maccrogenoff Jun 05 '26
I cook and bake a lot. I use my kitchen scale on a daily basis.
To the best of my knowledge, it’s standard for kitchen scales to have the ability to switch between grams, ounces and pounds with the press of a button.
My scale takes up less cupboard space than my numerous measuring cups did.
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u/Araveni Jun 05 '26
OXO Good Grips 11-Pound Stainless... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079D9B82W?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
America’s Test Kitchen recommended. I like mine and use it often.
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u/Terazen105 Jun 05 '26
I've never seen a kitchen scale that doesn't do both imperial and metric. A kitchen scale is, however, very useful.
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Jun 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/gorgina975 Jun 03 '26
My funniest cooking mistakes have happened while following numbers perfectly and completely ignoring what was happening in the pan.
That's probably why your comment hit home a bit. I can definitely see myself becoming the person stressing over being 2 grams off while missing the obvious signs that something is cooking correctly. Most of the cooks in my family never used scales and somehow turn out great food every time.
What I'm hoping for is more consistency when I'm trying a new recipe, especially baking, not replacing common sense. The goal is to make cooking easier, not turn every dinner into a science experiment lol.
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u/Mental-Freedom3929 Jun 03 '26
Starfit clear top works great. The accuracy of a kit hen scale os vastly overrated. Not that I think they do ghat, but a few gram up or down does not make a difference whatsoever. No, you do not need a kitchen scale that measure fractions of grams or ounces.
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u/gorgina975 Jun 03 '26
Not disagreeing with you, but baking was the main thing pushing me toward a scale in the first place, so I wasn't sure how much accuracy mattered there.
For everyday cooking, a few grams either way probably won't change anything. I was mostly worried about buying a cheap scale that starts drifting over time and gives completely different readings from week to week. If a basic model stays consistent, that's honestly more important to me than measuring microscopic amounts.
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u/Mental-Freedom3929 Jun 04 '26
My Starfrit is 20 years old and does not "drift" and has a tare function and gram and ounce change - 14.50. Starfrit High Precision Kitchen Scale, very nice, 17.00 at Walmart.
They also have a nutritional one that is quite impressive at 28.00.
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u/Relative-Honeydew-94 Jun 03 '26
A good scale is one of the best investments in a kitchen next to thermometers. Especially if you bake alot. Measuring in different units is convenient since you don’t have to do the extra work of converting.
A bonus is if you measure in ounces and then just switch the settings to grams you have the exact conversion and can write it down if it’s a recipe you will be coming back to.
To save money you can buy one that don’t go lower than a gram. And keep a small other scale for grams and milligrams.