A Kitchen Scale That Pulls Its Weight

Product reviewed: EatSmart Precision Elite Digital Kitchen Scale

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I have never been one to reach for a scale when I cook. As a restaurant chef, a pinch of this and a dollop of that was the tried-and-true approach to making meals delicious — albeit relatively inconsistent. As a dietitian and recipe developer, however, the scale is one of the best tools for the kitchen.  Not only does a scale allow you to objectively educate patients on portion control, but it helps you produce recipes with consistent quality.
I had the opportunity to explore the EatSmart Precision Elite Digital Kitchen Scale, and I decided to make Stromboli, using the scale to perfect the quantity of dough and ingredients.

Pros

The scale is big enough to weigh a melon, but also compact and lightweight, easily fitting next to a stack of cutting boards in my cupboard. It comes with a calorie-counting booklet, which allows the user to know how many calories are in a given weight of commonly consumed food items. The platform is stainless steel, and the scale has a large backlit display. Four included AAA batteries power the scale, and if there is one thing I hate in the kitchen, it’s messing around with power cords. Plus, the mobility of the scale makes it super easy to move to heavy objects, instead of the other way around.
Now to the functionality. The scale offers weights in ounces (to the nearest hundredth), grams, pounds and kilograms, with a maximum capacity of 7 kilograms.
There also is a tare feature, which allows you to subtract the weight of whatever container you’re using to measure your ingredient. This is a perfect way to keep the scale clean and allows users to weigh liquids. The EatSmart scale is very similar to one I used while working in a food lab, where each ingredient I used had to be weighed to the gram. I found it very user friendly with a sleek design that produced accurate results.

Cons

There were very few things I didn’t like about the scale. The biggest enhancement I would like to see is the ability to weigh in grams to the tenth decimal place as opposed the nearest whole gram, although the latter is honestly useful in most circumstances. And, though this wasn’t an issue for me, it might be beneficial to include separate buttons to power on/off and to switch between units (the power button does both). Besides that, this was one of the best kitchen scales I have used.

The efficient and accurate response time for taring the scale and weighing the items for my Stromboli made the process seamless and enjoyable. If you’re interested in developing consistent recipes or are in the market for a new scale, go ahead and check out the EatSmart Precision Elite Digital Kitchen Scale – you’ll thank yourself for making the choice.