Being conversant about the number of ounces that fit your bowl is useful for various reasons.
It’s great when you want to avoid prepackaged ingredients and make your own recipes.
You can also save money compared to buying from the store.
It can also benefit someone who is watching his diet and wants to prepare recipes for cutting weight.
This knowledge can also help when serving or observing etiquette for various table settings like dinner parties, restaurant settings, business dining, or international dining settings.
The Ounce
Cooking measurement units are what we use when making our liquid cooking recipes.
These cooking units include cups, fluid ounces and tablespoons.
They are the units we use to measure the volume of fluids. For example, 1 US tablespoon holds 0.5 units of a fluid ounce.
When dealing with larger volumes, cups are usually used with one cup being equal to 8 fluid ounces.
It is easy to confuse fluid ounces with the ounce which is used to measure weights. This is because fluid ounces are also referred to as ounces in everyday conversation.
Since we are dealing with fluids, we will be using fluid ounces.
Fluid ounces are commonly abbreviated to just fl. oz with the singular use being fluid ounce and the plural as fluid ounces.
We can convert back and forth between tablespoons and fluid ounces (oz) or cups. For example, to convert from ounces to tablespoons, we multiply the ounce value by 2.
Bowl Types
The ounces that we use for a bowl depend on which type of bowl you are using.
So, you need to be familiar with your bowl or dinnerware. Each of these holds different capacities.
For example, soup bowls typically average about 8 to 12 ounces. The bowls are also differently shaped to suit different types of soup or occasions (whether formal or informal).
Dinnerware comes in different varieties depending on the manufacturer.
Since no hard and fast rules exist among the manufacturers, you will often have to calculate what you need to fit your purposes.
Here are 6 examples of some typical soup bowls:
- Soup Cereal Bowls: The standard size for a cereal bowl is about 8 ounces. This gives 16 tablespoons
- Soup Plate: This is a deep, concave-shaped plate that has a wide rim. Specialized for formal dinner service, it is usually shallow and wide. It holds about 1 to 2 cups which is equivalent to 8 to 18 ounces. This is equivalent to a 16 to 36 tablespoons
- Bouillon Cup: This is a small cup fitted with two handles ideal for mixing or serving pudding, soup, custard, chili or bouillon. It normally ranges from 7 to 8 ounces. This would give you about 14 to 16 tablespoons
- Coupe Soup Bowl: These are shallow soup bowls often used to serve salads, soups, cereals, or desserts. This can hold about 18 ounces.
- Cream Soup Bowl: Ideal for light menus, it is used to serve pureed soup as the first course in a meal. It gives a capacity of 8 ounces
- Lug Soup Bowl: Also known as onion soup bowl, it is used to make various servings such as French onion soup. It can hold up to 12 ounces.
The Portuguese have a saying that: “Better safe than sorry; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
True enough, if you get your ounces and bowls right, nothing is bound to go wrong at dinner time.
