Recomendation for a good kitchen scale under $50?
I am looking into getting a kitchen scale, and I'm torn. Do I need one? If so, which one? I'm looking at Salter and Escali, two manufactures carried by Cutlery and More, an online store that ships to Puerto Rico for a reasonable cost, but I'm open to suggestions.
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2 Comments:
Do you need one? If you bake or intend to get into baking, especially pastries and cakes, yes. If you are on the kind of diet that requires you to do portion control yes. If you follow a lot of non-American recipes (American ones tend to go for the cups and spoons, just about the rest of the world does metric measurements) yes.
Any decent digital scale is fine, and most are way under $50. Just about every modern digital scale has these needed features:
- TARE (where you press a button to subtract the weight of the container you're putting the ingredients you want to measure in)
- very long lasting on one change of batteries
- big, easy to read numbers
- easy to clean off your floury/greasy fingerprints
- easy switching from metric to old skool
In terms of brands...I had a Soehnle, which was at least 12 years old, and finally broke when it was dropped from a high shelf onto the kitchen (tile) floor and was smashed to bits. So, I got another, rather fancier Soehnle. They are a bit expensive...but durable. And look really nice.They do have under $50 models. But I'm sure other manufacturers' models are fine too, if they have the above features. For what it's worth, Escali got a Consumer Reports best value or something award.
With a good set of measuring cups and measuring spoons to go with your scale, you'd be all set to measure anything you want to.
maki at 4:44PM on 03/29/07
We've been through a few kitchen scales (some costing $70 and up).
Features to look for, back lit display, standard batteries, high capacity (critical for tare use with heavy containers, or adding to heavy liquids), offset or detachable display (for weighing awkward items).
We've switched to a UltraShip #55. They sell on eBay for a total (BuyItNow price + Shipping) of about $25 (shockingly cheap!).
Large backlit LCD display easy to read even without glasses.
Accute to 1/10th of a ounce
Goes up to 55lbs
Display/control detaches to put large items (BIG BOWLS!) on the base and still read the display and control the unit
Runs on standard C batteries or AC (came with AC adapter).
TARE (do any digital scales not have a TARE?)
Doesn't timeout immediately (many kitchen scales timeout very quickly).
Grams, Ounces, lbs, kg.
I recommend buying from oldwillknott, they have a 99.9% positive rating with over 64,000 ratings. I've bought three scales from them, I'm pleased.
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=ultraship+55
Also if you are serious about dieting, and dread eating out because it's very hard to count calories, I recommend a pocket scale. I got one for my wife, it was cheap, and except for the limited capacity (which makes TARE impractical with heavy plates) I highly recommend it. The pull out hidden display is particularly cute.
Cost me $17 including shipping from oldwillknott for a LUXE 600 x 0.1 GRAM DIGITAL POCKET SCALE
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=LUXE+600+x+0.1+GRAM+DIGIT
peekpoke at 6:43AM on 04/16/07