Flash in the Pan

Every kitchen should have a scale. Whether trying to portion out evenly-sized meatballs or using the most accurate types of baking recipes, nothing pulls its weight like being able to measure weight.

For years I've used a spring-loaded dial-type scale. But I had questions about the accuracy. So I was delighted when Tanita sent a KD-400 Compact Digital Lithium Kitchen Scale (here's a link to their kitchen scale products) for me to review. The company specializes in electronic measurment, whether bathroom scales, body fat indicators (not a category I even want to look at), or breathing and heart rate monitors. As a good factor, that means it's not just slapping its name on some product purchased from someone else, so they should know something.

And from what I could see, they apparently do. I like the layout - notice how the display folds up against the plate. That lets you set the scale on edge in some unobtrusive part of the kitchen so it's handy and yet out of the way. That's a big plus in our kitchen, where my wife frowns upon having too much clutter on the counter. I'm storing it between the espresso machine and the coffee grinder (no, she can't take that away from me, at least not if she wants her cup).

The plate is big enough to set a medium pot or a good-sized bowl while leaving the display visible. The one I'm looking at has a 5KG/11LB capacity - plenty for even an oversized home batch of bread dough. You can measure down to 1 gram or 1/8 ounce (and note that 1 gram is about 0.035 ounces, so you lose accuracy with avoirdupois). There is an on/tare button (so you can zero out on a container, like a bowl, and then measure what you add to it) and an off button. Pressing both buttons switches between metric and avoirdupois, for those of us still holding on to the old-fashioned way of doing things.

There are some negatives. One is that in kitchen recipe volumes there are amounts that will be too small to measure. For example, 1/2 teaspoon of water is about 0.085 ounces and the scale won't register below 1/8 ounce, which would be 0.125 ounces. (Here is a site with some volume/weight conversions that I certainly found handy.) So it would be easy to have some weights that simply wouldn't show up.

Another is that fractions of ounces can't be displayed in decimal format; if you have to put together a number of odd measurements, the addition can require more thought. I see two workarounds: shifting to metric and its decimal display when necessary or using the tare button to keep resetting the weight to zero and then adding the next amount. An even pickier issue is that the case is made of plastic, not metal, and so has a flimsier feel. I understand that plastic can be strong and might be a good choice for this particular use, but it left me feeling that I had to use kid gloves to some degree. Like I said, picky.

Oh, and if you get one, you apparently have to ignore the setup instructions that tell you to insert the lithium battery (and lithium should mean long life). The battery was already in place on the one I saw but there was a black tape sticking out that the manual didn't mention. As the unit wouldn't turn on, I thought that the battery might be bad and so pulled on the tape, which I thought was there to help dislodge the battery. Instead, the tape came completely free. It was only then I remembered something similar on other devices, where the tape kept the battery from discharging before the unit was purchased. Sure enough, once the tape had come away, the scale worked. It would have been nice to know that ahead of time, and I can see how that might confuse consumers.

On the whole, though, it's a nice scale and there are plenty of recipes in which you could measure all the ingredients. The list price is $59.99, but a quick check on Froogle.com shows prices around $40, so shop around.