We’re big fans of the kitchen scale here at the test kitchen. A good scale lets you be much more precise when measuring amounts of any ingredient, ensuring success and consistency, especially with baked goods. (We’ve found that measuring dry goods by volume, as you would with a measuring cup, can result in significant differences in how well cakes and breads turn out.)
Equipment
The Most Underrated Button on Your Kitchen Scale
Want to get the most out of your kitchen scale? This button will help.
By Published Feb. 15, 2024.
A good scale also lets you measure ingredients faster and more efficiently than with a measuring cup, too.
This is all thanks to the magic of the tare button.
Sign up for the Well-Equipped Cook newsletter
Shop smarter with our ATK Reviews team's expert guides and recommendations.
America's Test Kitchen will not sell, rent, or disclose your email address to third parties unless otherwise notified. Your email address is required to identify you for free access to content on the site. You will also receive free newsletters and notification of America's Test Kitchen specials.
What Is the Tare Button?
On many scales, it’s a separate button that says “tare” or “zero.” On others, including our winner, the OXO Good Grips 11 lb Food Scale with Digital Display, you can tare or zero out your ingredients using the on/off button.
However it appears, the tare button’s function is to set the balance of the scale back to zero so that you can weigh ingredients by themselves, and not weigh the ingredients plus the vessel they’re sitting in.
The Best Kitchen Scales
No matter what you’re cooking or baking, weighing the ingredients helps guarantee perfect results—but only if your scale is accurate and easy to use.How Do You Use the Tare Button?
Place your bowl or whatever you’re using to measure ingredients on the scale platform. Press the tare button to set the scale to zero, canceling out the weight of the bowl.
Now you can start measuring your ingredients directly into the bowl, using either the ounce or gram measurement provided alongside the volume measurements in our recipes. Simply pour the ingredient into the bowl until it reaches the desired amount and you’re good to go!
Why Should You Use the Tare Button?
For recipes where you mix several ingredients together, the tare button is even more useful. It lets you weigh several ingredients in sequence without having to get out other bowls to hold each one. Simply use the tare button to reset the scale balance in between each ingredient.
So for example, if you were making our Pain au Levain, you would make the initial levain like this:
- Measure 106 grams of flour into a bowl placed on the scale.
- Press the tare button.
- Pour 113 grams of water into the same bowl.
- Press the tare button.
- Add 57 grams of sourdough starter to the bowl.
Instead of carefully eyeballing each ingredient in a dry measuring cup, liquid measuring cup, and measuring spoon, you’ve freely poured each ingredient into a single bowl, saving time and effort!
The process is so much quicker, tidier, and less fussy. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll never go back to measuring by volume.