Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Tiny Amounts Defined - Micro Blog

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I was looking at an online recipe for Guacamole, when I noticed the recipe called for "1/8 teaspoon of hot sauce." I thought it was funny to see it worded that way; that amount is typically referred to as "a dash." After clicking through the site for a bit, I noticed instructions for 1/8 teaspoon of this and 1/16 teaspoon, more commonly known as a pinch, of that. I wondered why the writers of the site veered from the common cooking vernacular. I did some research, and discovered articles, such as the one at EHOW.COM, which refer to dashes & pinches as subjective measurements. It may be that the site's writers used the teaspoon fraction because many people think dashes & pinches are subjective measurements. They're not.

Terms Defined:
1 dash = 1/8 tsp
1 pinch = 1/16 tsp (1/2 dash)
1 smidgen = 1/32 tsp (1/4 dash)
1 nip = 1/64 tsp (1/8 dash)


I'm not sure how much flavor a single dash of hot sauce will add to a dip, personally. Yet, if you do need to add a dash, or less, of something to a recipe, most measuring spoon sets come with a 1/8 teaspoon measure. There are also special measuring spoons made if you need to accurately measure anything less than a dash.
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3 comments:

  1. This is so cool! I had read something like this before a really long time ago and swore I dreamt it because I haven't seen it ever since lol. Thanks for sharing James! =]

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  2. Well, thank you. I'm happy you liked it.

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  3. LOVE this post James. Hilarious and helpful. That's how many grandmums recipes are written out and now I have a translation. Cheers! Jenny

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