Culinary Tips

My last rant about math in the kitchen got me thinking about the other main use for math in my kitchen life – recipe scaling.

Recipe scaling comes in handy when you have a recipe that yields a different amount than the amount that you need, but you want to make it anyway, and you want it to come out the same.

For example, a muffin recipe that yields 36 muffins, but you need 90.  Sure you could do a double batch, but then you’ll be short, or a 3X, but then you’ll have too many.  The best and easiest thing to do is scale the recipe to fit your needs.

The first step it to figure out how many times a recipe you need to make.  If your recipe is too small, this will always be a number larger than 1.  If your recipe is too big, your number will be a decimal smaller than 1.

90portions required / 36 portion yield=2.5x recipe.  You need to multiply each ingredient with a factor of 2.5.

1kg of flour becomes 2.5kg.

400g of sugar becomes 1kg.

Etc.

I have had so many stages come through my shop without a calculator, without even an idea of how to scale a recipe that I’m scared now, and that is the thing that I make darn sure they leave with above all else.

In lieu of an actual post, here’s some humorous rap music.

The website itself moved a few weeks ago, but now we, the writers, are moving. We’re leaving our tiny apartment for a slightly less tiny apartment [it has a red wall!]. The new Culinary Tips home has a large kitchen with 12-16 feet of counter space, compared to the 2.5 cubic feet of usable space we have now. This will allow us to cook and photograph easier, so expect a flood of posts coming in a few short weeks.