Balancing act

I’ve written in Shared Kitchen before about my frustration in finding  decent kitchen scales. I went through three Salter scales in eight years, adding to landfill. Here’s what I said, followed by what has now happened, 

‘It WOULD  happen during Lockdown – my kitchen scale died. No amount of trickery or promises would get it to operate. Apart from a one-off, brief, full-on-ready-to-go screen flash, it’s dead. Drat. I’m annoyed because it is the THIRD set I have had in about eight years. Apparently, I am not alone. Many other people are finding SALTER scales to be useless. It used to be such a good reliable brand. Now the scales are cheaply made, light, plasticy, and when they break, you can’t open them to have a tinker. They go to landfill. It’s shocking. I’ve created 3 sets of scales for landfill. What to do? Talk about it loudly. Complain. Contact the importers, and talk to Consumer magazine. Let me know if you have had a problem with these scales, and whether you have found a reliable brand to replace them. The older Salter scales that have the raised weighing platform seem to go the distance, so it’s just the sort pictured here which are causing concern.’

I then dug out my balance scale, purchased 40 years ago in London and transported back carefully to New Zealand. I had metric and Imperial weights and used them for years and they were, of course, 100% accurate. But the brass weights were a fiddle to clean, and the scale took up room and weren’t that convenient to use, and I couldn’t take them on cooking jobs. Somewhere along the line I took to a digital scale that allowed you to go back to zero to add extra ingredients to the bowl. That was useful. As I recall most of the scales were the Salter brand and I was happy with them (I used them a lot, taking them on jobs, so they didn’t last for as long as they might have) BUT enter the days of the new design that looks smart, but, as explained above, just doesn’t go the distance.

It took me two weeks to find the old weights in the container I have stuffed full with kitchen equipment and cookbooks.  Mainly because I kept getting side-tracked, ‘oh, that’s where it went’.

I then felt inspired to clean the brass pans of the balance scale and I polished the weights and admired the gleaming set-up for several days, but I acknowledged I probably wasn’t going to use them on a daily basis. I had to get a new scale. And I did. I found a scale on Waiheke during Covid Level 3! It won’t have the same problems as the Salter scales (buttons jamming, battery fiddly to get in and out and battery housing ceasing to work). If you’re looking for new scales, I can recommend Avanti Electronic Scales.

And you might find this article helpful. It’s on the BBC Good Food site and covers 8 different kitchen scales, including a favourable review of Salter 10kg scales (this one does not have buttons but a touch screen at the base of the scales, as in the Avanti, which makes it easy to tap when you have a bowl in place on the scales and you are adding more ingredients). BBC Good Food Kitchen Scales Review