Pasta Serving?
 

This may be a silly question .... but how do you measure out your pasta??? All of the packages list the serving in grams ... the problem is how do I measure it out??

Do you all just measure a half a cup dry? Or cooked? Or ...???

Help!

Thanks ;)

I could tell you the way that Italians do it, at least with long thin pastas...

make a ring with your forefinger and thumb around the bunch of pasta, be sure to dip the tip of your fingernail right into the joint right below your thumbnail. That's an Italian serving for one. Or about 1 inch diameter of long pasta. I usually measure my spiral and shell pastas by the cup. I generally allow 1/4 to 1/3 cup per person.

Alternatively, Google has a nifty calc feature. So, open up google and lets say you want 250 grams of pasta, but measured in cups. Type in "250 grams in ounces" in the search bar which gives you 8.81849049 ounces. Now take that figure and type "8.81849049 ounces in cups"

1.10231131 US cups is your answer. So, just over 1 cup is equal to 250 grams of pasta. ^_^ This calc function works with most all imperial/metric conversions. You can even do maths in it!

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/help...tml#calculator

The ounces to cup conversion is most likely based on fluid ounces. Since pasta weighs less than water, it is not really the best way to calculate it. I would take the package, divide it into the number of servings on the box, making sure each serving looks about equal. Then you'll know about how much is a serving.

Option B: you could get a food scale.

I always wonder about servings of pasta, too. Not so much the dry serving size, I have a food scale for that. The cooked pasta measurement is what I don't know. I guess I could just measure out some dry and cook it and then measure it.

My pasta comes in 8-serving boxes. So when I cook a meal for 4, I cook half the box. This is easier to eyeball for skinny long pastas. Otherwise, I use a pasta that gives me a serving measurement in "about x cups dry" and measure dry.

One pound of pasta typically serves 8. There are 16 oz in a pound. So I weigh out 2 oz per person on my food scale. If I'm cooking spaghetti I use the nifty little serving gauge on my pasta storage container (I think it's from tupperware.) Sometimes I will measure pastas that are small (when I'm in a hurry.) Somehow I doubt the accuracy when measuring large odd shaped pastas because there seems to be a lot of "air space" included with the measurement.

Thank you all so much for your help. I was feeling a little lost. I will definately use the index finger/thumb method for the long noodles. That's very cool.

I think I am going to break down and just get a food scale. I feel nervous about eating pasta now without being methodical, considering it has so many calories and it's oh so easy for me to over do it LOL.

I love my food scale. After 3 years, I still have a tendency to eyeball "big" portions, so I have to keep measuring stuff like pasta, rice, shredded cheese, couscous, nuts, dried fruit to keep me honest. I normally prefer "shaped" whole wheat pasta (rotini, butterfly) so I usually measure it with a measuring cup. If I were making long spaghetti, I would break it in half and measure 2 oz with my food scale!

BTW, the thumb and forefinger method is probably going to give you a lot more than 2 ounces, so if you're relying on it to count calories, it probably isn't the best way. 2 ounces is about 200 calories, and is the standard serving size for pasta. You could be getting twice that much with the finger measurement.

An "Italian" serving of pasta is probably a bit bigger than the recommended portion!!! :)