Kitchen Scales: What To Look For

Kitchen scales: weighing your options

Kitchen scales are useful for chefs who want to get the most accurate cooking results, since measuring cups and spoons can throw off ingredients by 10 percent, say editors at Cook's Illustrated magazine. These errors can cause a recipe to turn out differently each time.

Overall, in most reviews, experts don't find big discrepancies in accuracy between digital kitchen scales. However, ease of use and features do make a difference, and sometimes the simplest features prove the most useful.Most digital food scales offer a feature known as "tare," which zeroes out the weight of what is on the platform, so consumers don't have to mentally subtract the weight of the bowl or plate. Dieters often find use for food scales for measuring exact portion sizes, and kitchen scales can even be used to weigh postal mail. While manual scales can serve the same purpose, they're generally harder to read (most use a needle gauge that leaves margin for human error), less accurate and less precise (with measurements in five-gram increments rather than single gram) and are harder to clean with many parts and crevices.

Diabetics and other people on special diets may find it worthwhile to spend extra money for a digital scale such as the EatSmart Nutrition Scale (*Est. $75), which has a built-in database that provides nutritional information on a variety of foods. If you don't need these features, general purpose scales are significantly less expensive and many offer accurate measurements, several measurement unit options and capacities of 11 pounds or more (experts say a scale should have a capacity of at least seven pounds). Scales with automatic shutoff features save valuable battery life, but if the shutoff time is two minutes or less, you might find that your unit shuts off mid-measurement. In this case, recall of the last measurement read is quite useful, a feature offered by some kitchen scales.

As with many digital products, kitchen scales can malfunction. Most manufacturers offer a warranty of at least two years, and any major defects should be obvious within that time. Finally, most kitchen scales now operate with standard batteries, although there are a few requiring specialty batteries that can be hard to locate in stores.

Here are some other things to remember when shopping for a kitchen food scale.

• Look for a grams-to-ounces switch on the front of the scale. Front-located conversion switches are a convenient feature for cooks who frequently flip-flop between measurements when baking.

• Think small. Look for a smaller scale that can be stored in a cabinet. Larger, bulky items take up valuable counter real estate and their bigger footprint can make them a pain to use.

• Look for a tare function. Tare features reset the scale to zero, allowing users to easily weigh ingredients without having to take into account the weight of the container.

• Seamless buttons are best. Steer clear of kitchen scales with seamed buttons since flour and and other fine ingredients can easily enter and clog crevices. Over time, these occurrences can cause a kitchen scale to stop working.

• Removable platforms are a must. Kitchen scales with this feature are much easier to clean.

• Look for ample capacity and precise calibration. Experts recommend kitchen scales with at least five pounds of capacity and a calibration of 0.1 ounces and one gram.

• Check the display. Tinier display panels can be impeded by larger bowls and platters, hindering a result's readability. To head off problems, look for kitchen scales with very large displays.

• Take a test drive. Some stores allow consumers to test scales prior to purchase. If this is an option for you, try this quick test: To determine if a kitchen scale is accurate, weigh five nickels. The total weight should be 25 grams.