Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The Kitchen Helper Cheat Sheets

Supper is hectic in every household—especially for young families—with busy schedules, shift work, overtime, missed trains, kids, team practice, etc. If you're like me, you don't always have time to get on your phone or tablet, or run to the computer to check recipe conversions or ingredient substitutes. For this reason, I've put together a Kitchen Helper Cheat Sheet for those of you who are Canadian expats in the UK, like myself.




For the past week, I've done a lot of research and worked really hard to pull this set of "cheat sheets" together. Having been living in England for the past 8½ months, I'm all too aware of the frustration caused by running back and forth to the computer to get gram-to-cup conversions because I cook from a British cookbook, but we still haven't bought a scale!

On this (hopefully helpful) group of cheat sheets, you will find:
  1. Gram-to-cup conversions of common ingredients;
  2. Liquid (and herbs and spices) conversions including common-Imperial-Metric measures;
  3. Oven temperature guide (electric oven in Fahrenheit & Celsius, convection/fan oven, gas oven);
  4. Cake pan sizes in centimetres and inches;
  5. A glossary of British cookery terms "translated" to "Canadian".

Since I've covered all the bases (I think) with weights and measures converted from the common US cup to both the Imperial and Metric systems, these sheets will likely come in just as handy for any American expats in the same situation. Actually, I suppose anyone at all who uses recipes from the UK will find these pages helpful. These documents will also continue to be useful if/when you return to Canada with your British recipes.

List of Kitchen-Related Documents
For your convenience, I've made various printer friendly versions in PDF format, depending on what you need, with extra space to write your own notes or scribble terms or conversions that you use a lot.
The Kitchen Helper Cheat Sheets
Full set of 7 pages.

The Kitchen Helper Cups to Grams Common Ingredients
Page 1 only. (Item 1 only.)

The Kitchen Helper Liquids+Herbs
Page 2 only. (Item 2 only.)

The Kitchen Helper Measurement Conversion Guide
Pages 1 & 2. (Items 1 and 2.)

The Kitchen Helper Oven Guide
Page 3 only. (Items 3 and 4.)

The Kitchen Helper Cheat Sheets ABR
Everything except the glossary; 3 pages.

The Kitchen Helper Glossary
Only the glossary; 4 pages.

°°°

Sources
If you still need help finding what you need, here are the best links I've found to help you in the kitchen.

Online Conversion's Ingredient List. You can find the ingredient of your choice and then choose from what measure to what measure you need it converted.

BBC's Good Food Conversion Guide There is a sugar temperature guide on BBC's page, as well as both a Volume and Weight converter for Imperial to Metric at the bottom of the page.

All Recipes Dot Com Cooking Conversions With extra measures for porridge and dry ingredients by weight (Imperial ounces).

John Ward's Metric Kitchen This site also gives you length conversions if you need to know how thick to slice your carrots, or what size to cube your aubergine. There are also recipes to practice with.

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