>>14309
I think it's quite convenient. I've never had poor results following a recipe like that, and it saves the hassle of weighing shit.

I judge everything by eye. Can't go far wrong.

A 'cup' is a silly unit even for liquids. Not all cups are the same size after all.

Then again I'm a scientist so I won't be truly happy until oven temperatures are given in kelvin and liquids are boiled under reflux.

>>14312

I believe they use a standard cup size

>>14313
But that's stupid when the standard deviation of cup sizes equals or exceeds the size of a supposedly 'standard' cup size.

If it's 240ml then why not just say to put in a quarter of a litre/half a pint? Maybe it's because talking about half a pint of broccolli would be even sillier.

>>14313>>14314

When I was a kid I once fucked up a biscuit recipe entirely by using a literal arbitrary cup from the kitchen in order to measure out cups of sugar.

Ever since I have had a very rational hatred of said measurement system.

Yes, it's incredibly annoying. It's not even like you can convert to grams.

You can buy a set of spoons that measure in different fractions of cups, but I refuse to yield to the yanks. Just don't follow American recipes, it's not like they can cook anyway.

>>14312

For some reason a lot of commercial oven manufacturers give their operating temperatures in kelvin in their specs. I don't really know why, I suppose 600k sounds better than 330C, but it's insane.

>>14317
I'd hardly call it insane, all you have to do is take-away or add 273K. Giving temperatures in Fahrenheit or a similarly outdated temperature scale would be far worse.

People tend to think that baking is a difficult art and that sometimes bakes just fail, but that belief is just due to a lack of precision.

Measuring powders by volume is woefully imprecise, due to the difference in density due to compaction. A volume measure of flour can vary by at least 150%. Likewise, people trust the woefully inaccurate markings on their oven knobs, rather than spending five quid on a decent thermometer.

Get those variables cracked and baking is a piece of piss. You can churn out really tricky bakes with absolute confidence, especially if you're not afraid to use modern additives.

>>14317

When it's cold, put on ya jumper. When it's warm, go t'park to watch tha lasses.

Don't mess wi' Yorkshire.

I agree OP, it's moronic.

>>14316
>Just don't follow American recipes
This is excellent advice. Whenever I'm trying something new (or checking around for ideas) I read a few recipes online and the American ones are uniformly terrible. Why does everything they cook have to have so much sugar in it? Even the savoury stuff.

1 CUP SUGAR
1 CUP OIL
1 CUP CHOCOLATE

MIX AND SERVE

>>14312
It's relative though, innit. If you're mixing a cup of milk and a cup of water, you'll get the same result no matter how big or small the cup is.

>>14318

It's insane because it's catering equipment. When's the last time a recipe gave you a temperature in kelvin?

>>14318
Actually, 273.15K.

Celsius is brilliant because it deals with temperatures we face every day, on a simple 0-100 scale, instead of a 273.15-373.15 scale which looks retarded.

Keep Kelvin in the lab.


>>14321

You're telling me. When I started living on my own I perused different recipes online, found a nice looking dish and it merely consisted of pre-made ingredients and all that was required was mixing and placing into the oven. Americans are absolutely retarded when it comes to food.

And on another note, what is their obsession with bacon? It's alright, but fairly useless in terms of actual nutritional benefits.

>>14321
You missed out the butter which is measured in STICKS but equates to what we call a whole packet. This is why you're fat America.

>>14333

Celsius is clearly a retarded temperature scale to use in every day life. Who cares what temperature water boils and freezes at?

0 F = Very cold outside
100 F = Very hot outside

0 C = Fairly cold outside
100 C = Dead

>>14336
>Who cares what temperature water boils and freezes at?

If you haven't noticed, water is an essential part of our existence, in the environment, food, and our own bodies.

Keeping it confined in a simple 0-100 scale makes it easy to asses different situations at a glance, instead of making unnecessary calculations.

Now stop being daft.

>>14335
An American butter block would be a little smaller than ours, and would be divided into two sticks. The pathetic excuse given for the odd quantities is that most Americans don't have scales. Apparently the obvious solution of just buy some fucking scales didn't occur to them.

>consisted of pre-made ingredients
Anyone else notice how frequently ketchup is used as an ingredient in American recipes? I'm not opposed to a bit of "creative" cooking, using things you might otherwise not think of, but given the presumable variance between brands it seems kind of odd just how often it crops up.

>>14340
>The pathetic excuse given for the odd quantities is that most Americans don't have scales.
Is that really the excuse? It's not very convincing. But then >>14336, I suppose.

>>14340
I used to live in PA. Stores just don't sell kitchen scales over there.

>>14333
>And on another note, what is their obsession with bacon? It's alright, but fairly useless in terms of actual nutritional benefits.

As I understand it (although this could be filthy lies) their bacon tends to poor quality too, which is why it always gets cooked into this brown, shrivelled muck instead of the supple, juicy, pink meat that you or I would stick in a bap. Thus their bacon worship is even more daft in my eyes. Whenever the topic of American eating habits arises, I remember the stories a friend used to tell of yankee relatives who would come to visit and complain how everything lacked in flavour. They would then proceed to dust everything with sugar. Bread, cereal, sausages. That's right - SUGAR. ON SAUSAGES.

Also what makes yanks so special they think they can fuck with the worldwide convention on date formats? It gets right on my tits when I have to make a minor mental calculation convert 04/27/2014 to something that makes sense.

>>14343
>They would then proceed to dust everything with sugar

I had the privilege to live with Americans abroad, young folk, ranging from 19-22, from all around the States, and the antics they'd get up to beggared belief.

You're dead right about the flavour complaints, as their cereals consist basically 50% of sugar. Jam isn't jam, it's "jelly", and anything else that is remotely sweet is chock full of high-fructose corn syrup. The absolute worst mass-produced sweetener you can get.

Another interesting observation, is that they would get insane break-outs and spots, all because the food wasn't laced with antibiotics and preservatives. Which lead me to notice their complete lack of knowledge to spoilage and care of food.

I was there myself, and in all honesty, I loved the range of muck you can eat. It was amazing, and for the price as well. But you'll be stuck to find a good, home-cooked, honest dinner without any shite added.

>>14343
That's a thing. Proper bacon is called "canadian bacon" and their actual bacon is preserved in sugar. That must taste awful.

>>14333
The extra .15 degrees is meaningless unless you are able to control temperature incredibly precisely. Consider that a conventional oven will likely only be able to give temperatures ±5K if you're lucky.

I'm fairly sure you could go to even more decimal places if you wanted to but there's no point when the decimal points exceed the precision given. Reminds me of my old college canteen where food calorie contents was given to five (!) significant figures... with ±20% variance.

>>14333
It seems a bit silly for cooking ovens, but for industrial or laboratory furnaces kelvin will be the standard due to it being the only temperature scale worth talking about when it comes to thermodynamics. Look up aging/tempering/annealing temperatures of metals and they'll most likely be in kelvin. If the companies that manufacture these furnaces also manufacture conventional low temperature cooking ovens then they probably just stick to kelvin for consistency.

>>14345
I've never been to the states but my impression from tv etc. is that they mainly have streaky bacon as opposed to the obviously superior back bacon.

I was talking to an American mate the other day actually about what various things are like for them. I was surprised to find out that Guinness is considered a top-quality expensive beer as opposed to the watery pretend stout it actually is. Also they don't drink cider anywhere near as much as we do, in fact the name cider is taken to mean a non-alcoholic but bitter apple juice. However people do smoke rollies, which I'd always assumed was more of a British thing.

>>14348

That's a bit cheap about Guinness. Lets not overlook the fact that for many people, even in this country, it is seen as a challenging difficult-to-drink exotic flavour.

I was speaking to an American lad abroad, and he was adamant that they aren't all just Bud Lite drinkers - but that their craft brewing scene is every bit as varied and complex as our real ale scene. Of course they have their moronic lager-only sports fans, but so do we.

>>14349
From what I've heard the American craft-beer scene is huge. Unfortunately my only real experience of this is the Bengali Tiger cans doing the rounds at 'spoons lately but if I ever visit the states I'll have to try others.

I disagree about Guinness being commonly seen as exotic or difficult to drink. Maybe by people who don't drink beer at all but it can be found in every pub and most studenty types are happy to chug gallons of the stuff come paddy's day. I was probably a bit harsh on it, I do enjoy the odd Guinness but it's definitely very mass-produced and the flavour is far less pronounced than many other good stouts and porters from British and Irish brewers. It just surprised me that it's apparently seen as such a high quality beer over there. I guess it's to do with the import costs from Ireland, I noticed that Guinness was fairly expensive in places like Austria compared to the far tastier local brews.

>>14349
I've heard they have a thriving "microbrewery" scene, I'd be interested to have a crack at some of that. The popular mass-produced lagers are even worse than ours, though.

>>14349
In the states Stella is considered a top shelf beer, even though it's sold by Anheuser Busch. They do have a lot of craft breweries or microbreweries that make real ales. Then you do end up paying a hell of a lot more for these beers and there are a lot that just seem to do nothing but IPA variations.

When it comes to bacon you just need to watch this video to see what filth septic bacon is
https://www.youtube.com/v/_tvx_CKB7uI

>>14352
I suspect our own mass-manufactured bacon isn't far off that, to be fair. I presume the peculiarly translucent, wafer-thin stuff that you get in all the plastic-packed supermarket bacon brands is injected with water and fuck knows what else.

>>14352
Yeah my mate mentioned that, is yank Stella brewed over there under licence then? If it was the imported Belgian stuff I'd understand, so much better than the British made piss.

APA does seem to be quite a big thing, though I'd be surprised if they didn't experiment slightly more than us. I've heard many Europeans comment that British real ale is very preoccupied with making the perfect bitter and whilst this is demonstrably not the whole picture it is true for quite a few brewers here. Even if it's weird I do love to try a chilli, chocolate or ginger beer concoction.

>>14352
>liquid smoke
Fuck's sake, it's like my entire fucking life is a lie.

>>14357
What, did you think a nice little old farmer smoked each individual bacon rack?

The meat industry is deplorable, I'm no vegan armchair activist, but the way meat is produced is quite depressing.

Can't wait until synthetic protein is developed.

>>14356
I do believe it is imported from Belgium, which would explain the extra expense. The yank breweries do experiment, but they come up with some weird stuff. like maple bacon doughnut flavoured beer.

>>14362

Qorn and tofu are quite nice, and about as close as we have to synthetic protein for the moment.

>>14363
>maple bacon doughnut flavoured beer

Only in 'Merica.

>>14364
If by 'quite nice' you mean 'slightly preferable to recycling your own shit' then yeah.

>>14333
> what is their obsession with bacon?
Bernays did it. At least, that's what I've heard.
> In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat heavy breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as an ideal heavy breakfast and superior for health to the then traditional breakfast of tea (or coffee) and toast.

>>14366
I'm not the poster you were replying to, but I'm often perplexed by the attitude that some people have towards quorn and tofu. I'm not some crazy vegan, I had a bacon and egg sandwich for lunch, but this idea that all vegetarian food is tasteless garbage is just wrong. I imagine you've eaten meals with quorn in that were fucking disgusting, but that just means that whoever cooked it got it wrong. I've eaten plenty of shitty cottage pie ready meals and "steak" pasties that were borderline inedible, but that doesn't make me hate beef.

>>14362
Ironic to hear this when only a few threads ago in /b/ people were up in arms when asked to cut down on eating meat for environmental and political reasons.

I think people just don't like to be told what to do by people who know better than them.

>>14368
I tried Quorn once, never again, it's rank. For me when it comes to meat substitutes, vegetable/falafel burgers are fine, as is TVP.

Quorn mince is OK, but a lot of their other faux meat products are rank.

>>14369
Can you blame them?

We live in this nanny "5-a-day" culture where you're told you're supposed to eat 5 fruit/veg again, and you're supposed to exercise as much as possible. You can tell a society is fundamentally warped when it needs to be told to wipe itself after taking a shit.

>>14375

This bloody nanny state. If I want to sleep under an asbestos duvet or drink bleach or slit my eyeballs open with bits of glass, who are they to tell me how to live?

The sickness in society is that people are dying years or decades prematurely because they don't eat enough vegetables and don't go for a walk often enough, not that people are being told to do basic things to ensure their own survival.

Before we trot out the "I'd rather go out with a bang than rot away in a nursing home", a poor lifestyle is the easiest way to guarantee a slow and degenerative death. The primary causes of dementia and stroke are poor cardiovascular health. When your heart is weak and your arteries are hard and clogged and your kidneys and liver barely work, you rarely just keel over - your body slowly fails, giving out bit by bit, kept half-alive by modern medicine. If you know what it's like to watch someone slowly wither away, and if you understand just how important a good lifestyle is in preventing that sort of death, then it's shocking just how little we're being cajoled and coerced into living healthier lifestyles.

>>14375
No one is forcing you to eat five a day. Clearly most people aren't doing those things. A spot of education can't hurt.

>>14376>>14377

But eating well and moving your arse should be fucking innate - not some propaganda that's peddled by wankers like J. Oliver and the sort. The whole red/yellow/green marking circle bollox on boxes really gets my goat.
Sadly the shift from now to a much more health concious society takes years, if not decades - a good famine or two should sort that out. But in all seriousness, there are aspects of our society as a whole that encourage laziness and "can't be fucked" mentality.

I don't want to link to the pro-German thread on /b/.

>>14378
You're going to change human nature to make those things innate? Because they're not. You're arguing for not bothering to educate people on health because it "should" happen on its own over a period of decades? Just because you're sick of seeing information on packets of food? You're a nutcase.

>>14378

You seem angry at both those who don't care to keep healthy and those that do there best to make others do. I believe this is what they call a synaptical conflagration.

Well, they don't, but I forget what they actually call it. Can someone remind me?

>>14380

Cognitive dissonance? Doublethink?

>>14381
Cray-cray.

>>14381

>Cognitive dissonance

That's it! Thank you.

>>14382

There's no prizes for second place, bud.

Ok, I did a bit of a brain fart.

I best just walk away...

>>14380

*their

I meant "their"! Please have mercy!

This whole thread relies on people wanting to live until they're 100.

>>14394
I wouldn't want all my food laced with sugar even if I was immortal.

>>14394

Lots of young people will tell you that they don't want to live forever, but very few healthy elderly people want to die tomorrow. Looking after yourself gives you more chances to say "you know what, I think I've still got some more living to do". If you eat and drink yourself into an early grave, you're robbing the older you of that choice. It's not as if you have to live a terribly deprived life, as you get most of the benefit from just being sensible.

Ask any nonogenarian if they would rather trade the last decade or two of their life for more bacon and beer when they were younger. Ask any elderly person which memories they cherish more - eating cake and sitting on their arse, or watching their grandchildren and great grandchildren grow up. It's easy to be cynical and indifferent about your health when the consequences are decades in the future. Getting old is no fun, but most people find it immeasurably preferable to the inevitable alternative.

>>14401

>Ask any elderly person which memories they cherish more - eating cake and sitting on their arse, or watching their grandchildren and great grandchildren grow up. It's easy to be cynical and indifferent about your health when the consequences are decades in the future.

It's easy to be nostalgic and say "I wish I'd have" as well.

>>14312

It's an 8 ounce cup in this context. Fucks sake.

>>14340

The standard package of butter is a pound divided into for quarter pound sticks. The US, or "America", isn't some small insular, backwater island. Different areas have different cultural influences and different cuisines with varying amounts of butter. I don't think you know what you're talking about.

>>14342

You either. They're sold in loads of places, but apparently as Pennsylvania goes so goes the nation.

>>14352

No it's fucking not. It's stocked in convenience stores next to Budweiser, Heineken etc. The only person I know who drinks it out of preference is Chilean.

This fucking thread.

>>14404

>Different areas have different cultural influences and different cuisines with varying amounts of butter

And the USA's amount of butter is enough to drown a toddler when melted.

>>14405

Substantially less than the UK and the EU on average.

http://www.dairyinfo.gc.ca/index_e.php?s1=dff-fcil&s2=cons&s3=consglo&s4=tb-bt

>>14407
No mate, Americans are the fat ones who can't cook and have terrible eating habits. I won't let facts get in the way of that assumption, it's very important to me.

https://www.youtube.com/v/u4zw99VsoMA

The only thing that offends me about this video is there's no way that tastes good.

>>14407

Do yanks eat more margarine or 'spread'? Probably not since they're a huge dairy producing nation.

I blame our high score on toast. And being influenced by french cuisine, which is 90% butter. Most french sauces are just variations on melted butter. The only thing is that french people don't get fat, so they can eat as much of it as they want.

>>14412
I was going to post this myself, but I had to hold back since I know most americans aren't like this.

>>14415

Of course. I don't think any other americans are like that. The only real problem in the US is they've been raised on a sugary diet, more so than ours, because of HFCS and the like. Even their white bread is sweet.

>>14378

Humans are wired to seek out high calorie foods as they are so rare in nature.

Biology hasn't caught up to society yet, where high calorie products are everywhere.

>>14416
As I mentioned in a previous post of mine - anything that is sweet has HFCS in them. It's deplorable seeing as it's a purely politicly lobbyist reason as to why maize derived sweeteners are favoured over anything else.

I was amazed to see that regular honey is viewed as some magical ambrosia to some, where most just get "honey flavoured syrup".

>>14418
>It's deplorable seeing as it's a purely politicly lobbyist reason as to why maize derived sweeteners are favoured over anything else.
Very much this. Someone discovered that they could produce vast quantities of corn syrup from a relatively small quantity of corn. It's more consistent than cane sugar, and because of the much higher concentration you need less of it, and therefore it's cheaper for manufacturers. As a result of this, the sugar industry hyped it up like nobody's business. These days, demand for corn syrup is almost entirely driven by the US sugar industry to maintain its profitability.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to remind you two that the sugar conspiracy is a rare example of one that isn't mere theory.