Measuring utensils

[matt m]

Hello everyone, my name is matthew. Im a student currently doing a project designing kitchen utensils. I would be ever so grateful if you could spend just a few minutes of your time filling in this short questionnaire: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matthew.mattam/
It really is very short and i would be happy to share the outcome of my project in return. Thank you very much

[phatch]

Well, as I'm no fan of spam, i won't be emailing you my answers. Here they are for you to collect here. And this should have been posted in culinary students section.

Question 1) How often do you use the following utensils when cooking?

[1: Never, 2: Rarely, 3: Sometimes, 4: Often, 5: Everyday]

* Kitchen Scales: >4
* Measuring Jugs: >5
* Measuring Cups: >5
* Measuring Spoons: >5
* Kitchen Timer: >5

2) How important are the following characteristics of measuring jugs, cups, spoons and scales?

[1: Very important, 2: Quite important, 3: Not very important, 4: Quite unimportant, 5: Very unimportant]

* Ease of use: >1
* Speed of use: >1
* Accuracy: >1
* Ease of cleaning: >3 must be dishwasher safe
* Ease of transportation: >5
* Ease of storage: 2
* Aesthetics / Shape / Colour: >5

Question 3) What type of kitchen scale do you use?

[1: Electronic, 2: Spring & Needle Mechanism, 3: Traditional Balance Scales (Pans & Weights), 4: None]

>1

4) How often do you use the following size measuring jugs?

[1: Often, 2: Rarely, 3: Never]
* Large - 2 pint (1100ml): >1
* Medium - 1 pint (600ml): >1
* Small - 1/2 pint (300ml): >1

5) Do you often encounter any problems with current kitchen measuring utensils? How would you like to see them improved? Please state:
> Not with the utensils, but with the containers I measure from. They need wide mouths to accomodate a full tablespoon measure, and it would be nice if they had a nice straight edge at the mouth for scraping the measurement level. Save a step and some mess.

Measuring cups and spoons maybe could have a square edge for getting the last bits out of the jar/container.

Phil

[matt m]

thanks for your input phil, its much appreciated. If anyone else would rather post answers here instead of emailing thats just fine.

matt

[foodpump]

I've been baking and cooking for over 20 years now, and I only use two items: an electronic scale--in metric, and a 1 liter measuring jug.

Absolutely refuse to measure anything in a cup, peck, quart, peck, teaspoon, espresso spoon, or 1 1/9 cu.bushel. Still irritates me to no end to pick up an American "professional " magazine tofind stupid measurements like 9 tablespoons butter, or 1/3 cup molasses (ever tried edoing that?). It's alot of work converting the recipie measurements into weights, but all of my recipies are in weights and in metric. I'll also weigh out my liquids as a first choice rather than measuring them, as 1 liter of water is exactly 1 kg.

Sound strange? Professionals have been scaling (weighing out ingredients) long before they drew all those cute little pictures on pyramid walls of bakers using beam scales. Fast, accurate, and no plethora of stupid little utensils to clean up either....

[matt m]

Thanks phil, foodpump and anyone else who completed my questionnaire it is much appreciated. For those of you who expressed an interest in the results of the questionnaire and other peoples suggestions / comments these can now be found at the link

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matthew.mattam

matt