Quickly Estimate Serving Sizes and Measurements by Using Your Hands and Knowing Your Cooking Utensils

Sometimes when cooking you might not want to pull out the measuring cups or spoons. In those cases, use what you have in reach (or, well, on you): your hands and familiar utensils. As a bonus, knowing the size of your utensils and dishes at home may help you better control portions for better weight maintenance.

Shine Food offers these rules of thumb (pun intended) for using your hands to estimate portions:

1 teaspoon equals the tip of your thumb, 1 tablespoon equals your whole thumb, 1 cup equals your fist and 3 ounces of meat (which is an appropriate serving size) is the size of the palm of your hand.

While obviously not as exact as using scales and other proper measuring tools, you can save some time in the kitchen with these guidelines. For dieting purposes in particular, also add these previous suggestions for portion control with comparisons to other objects (e.g., cheese = pair of dice).

Another great tip is to know the size of your utensils and dishes, so that every time you use them, you know how many servings (or how much of a serving, I guess) you're getting:

You use the same ladle every time you scoop out some soup, right? So why not measure that ladle (fill it with water, then pour that into a measuring cup) right now so that each time you serve yourself some soup you know exactly how much you're getting. Also try this with your bowls. If you're a cereal eater, know what size bowl you eat out of. Should you be using a smaller bowl to make it easier to stick to that 1-cup serving?

For more portion related tricks, check out the article below or share your own in the comments.

Title image by Tyler Merry.

The Secret to Losing Weight Every Cook Should Know | Shine Food