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05-05-2005, 07:21 AM
|  | ChefTalk Moderator Culinary Experience: Retired Chef | | Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Minnesota
Posts: 4,137
| |  Metric PLEASE!
Everybody, if I promise to write all my recipes in metric will you do the same? In your kitchen, in your house?
Please?   |
05-05-2005, 09:04 AM
|  | ChefTalk Book Reviewer Culinary Experience: Other | | Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Walnut Grove, CA
Posts: 431
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LOL I feel your pain. Are you starting a Chelf Talk metric movement? I'll back you ;-)
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05-05-2005, 11:27 AM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Line Cook | | Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Singapore
Posts: 107
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I'm with you. Metric is definitely the way to go.
It's a waste of time having to convert recipes from volume to metric!
I'm glad we use metric in Singapore, hooray for that. |
05-05-2005, 01:11 PM
|  | Registered User Culinary Experience: Restaurant Manager | | Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Jacksonville, NC
Posts: 168
| | But why.....
I am just stuck in old school I guess. My brain hurts when I have to think about metric, however I am wondering why the interest in changing?
Frizbee
-sometimes disgruntal about change....
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05-05-2005, 06:25 PM
|  | Registered User Culinary Experience: Owner/Operator | | Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 3,104
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WHY????
The united Stated threatened to go metric years ago.LOL The legeslators couldn't understand it LOL |
05-05-2005, 06:54 PM
|  | Registered User | | Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 279
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LOL 
I am a CANADIEN!!!!!!
I am BI-SYSTEMATICAL 
Personally, I far prefer the use of cups and pounds over millilitres and grams.
I know my fist is a cup, my cupped hand is a teaspoon shallow and a tablespoon deep, that two fists is a pound and that 8 eggs is a cup.
I have no idea what 10 eggs would be, other than to many... 
Also, metric temp divisions are not clean. 350 F, 400 F, nice, clean numbers that have very predictable results that work. I have no idea the centigrade on any of that.
Now, if I was doing chemistry or physics or electronics, its metric all the way.
But with cooking, the most complicated electronics there is is the on switch, the most involved physics is that sudden motions cause souffles to fall, and the most complex chemistry is that to four fists of flour I add two deep handfuls of baking powder and one shallow hand of salt a fist to four fists of liquid and viola.... quick bread to corn bread to pour batter
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05-09-2005, 06:33 PM
|  | Registered User | | Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Canada
Posts: 98
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I too am Canadian and use both systems.  I can only tell you how warm it is out side in metric (24 today! Woo hoo Summer! ) but I can only cook in imperial ( I think I need to calibrate my dep fryer again, which only has imperial markings on it). I drive 88 kilometers to work every day but my stairs are 4 feet wide at home. I have no idea how many kilograms I weigh  (and am in denial as to how many pounds  ) but I buy my deli meat in grams. So really has Canada gone metric, ya sure, and we are all bilingual, say "eh" and live in igloos! I guess it is a Canadian thing to not want to offend the old system, so even though the laws have changed the people have not.  |
05-19-2005, 01:56 PM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: Dec 1999 Location: Philadelphia, Pa
Posts: 225
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We should move to metric time -
100 second a minute, 100 minutes an hour and 20 hours a day.
that makes a metric second about 1/2 of current second.
It would probably never happen, but it would simplify everything. Right now you have a system with 100(milliseconds), 60(seconds, minutes) and 12/24 (hours). for calculations you have to switch three times. ahhrrrggghhh! |
07-07-2005, 12:49 PM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Canada
Posts: 98
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Metric time! I love it!!!! Sign me up!  |
07-07-2005, 01:23 PM
|  | ChefTalk Moderator | | Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: SLC UT
Posts: 3,069
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Vernor Vinge and Charlie Stross in their fiction have used computer/metric time: kiloseconds, megaseconds, gigaseconds and so on. It's not perfectly clear if those are the binary computer multiples or the metric multiples, but it's a VERY interesting idea in light of their singularity based fiction.
Stross is giving away his latest novel, Accelerando in an experiment. I was somewhat let down by the ending, but rather enjoyed the rest of the novel.
Phil |
07-07-2005, 05:11 PM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Texas
Posts: 40
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Most of the recipes I post are far more vague aproximations of amount than the US measurement system. I would prefer metric but sometimes I simply dont measure out ingredients. Like many, I'm more inclined to skim a recipe and "wing it" rather than follow it word for word.
Of course, that does not apply to all food I cook. 
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Chef, Blue Door Cafe'
Culinary School Prospective |
07-07-2005, 07:51 PM
| | Registered User Culinary Experience: Owner/Operator | | Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 3,104
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My son and I are just finishing up his first Jensen Healey. The only tools I take care of are the metrics. Losing the standards keeps me from doing things around the house |
07-07-2005, 11:15 PM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Ottawa Ontario
Posts: 13
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I'm an American living in Canada, so I'm having to adjust to the bi-system
steaks cut in oz..
small measures are imperical, teaspoon, cup etc, but anything larger goes to liters not gallons
oven is in imperical, fridges are monitered in imperical, the heat in the kitchen in metric
shots at the bar are in oz. but wine (of course) is metric
if the floor drain backs up, the water is measured in inches, not centimeters
etc.. etc.. its confusing! I'm used to only imperical, metric would be fine, but using both seems challenging |
07-08-2005, 03:47 AM
|  | Registered User Culinary Experience: Professional Chef | | Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 318
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I only use metric unless a recipe calls for imperial. I also only measure things by weight, never by volume (more precise by weight). If a recipe calls for volume/imperial mesurements I just guess/estimate since I'm too lazy to convert. No ones noticed yet... |
07-09-2005, 04:08 PM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: Dec 1999 Location: Philadelphia, Pa
Posts: 225
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The one great thing about metric, one that many americans don't understand, is that with that system recipes are actually ratios. They can be instantly changed.
Like let's say I have a recipe that give me fifty 40 gram buns. Tomorrow I need a hundred and fifty 60 gram buns. I multiply the original recipe by 3(1.5x2). In ten - twenty(if you're really slllloooowww) seconds, you get the new recipe.
Most of my recipes, if they need precision(I don't weight tomatos for salsa), call for ratio alone:
1 flour
2 liquid
0.25 egg yolks
etc. | | |
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