Every time I cook a dish using dried pasta or noodles, I face a conundrum: how much pasta do I add? I can’t eyeball this consistently, and the various shapes, sizes and densities of noodles make this difficult.

I once followed the serving size suggestion on a box of penne: it left me wanting more. I suspect pasta nutrition facts portray smaller, side-dish-like serving sizes to keep the calorie count attractively lower (and not scare us with the carbolific truth). What about one of those spaghetti portion rings, you ask? I don’t own one, as I don’t like one-use kitchen items. Measuring cups? Doesn’t work with long noodles.

Then I had an idea.

I eyeballed rice noodles for two servings of pho. I measured the dry weight using a scale – 160g. I prepared the pho, slurped up the gingery-cilantro deliciousness, and concluded that I wanted a little more noodles next time. I jotted down “175g” on a piece a paper and kept that with the rice noodles in the pantry. Next time I measured out 175g of dry noodles in the pot, and was happy with the serving size. I plan to create weight notes like this for each type of pasta or noodle I regularly use and adjust it through trial and error.

Using a scale in the kitchen isn’t really common for making pasta or noodle dishes. But it is among coffee snobs and bakers. Why not apply this to other types of cooking? Or even things outside of the kitchen, where consistency is desired and its hard to eyeball the measurements.

Happy noodling!