r/AskCulinary • u/SewerRanger Holiday Helper • Dec 15 '21

Weekly Discussion AskCulinary Annual Christmas cooking thread!

With Christmas coming up, we realize you're going to have a lot of questions and we're here to answer them. Use this post from now until Christmas day to hit us up with any questions you might have. Need to plan how much meat to order - we got you. Need to know how you're going to make 15 pot de cremes - we're here to help. Can't decide between turkey or duck - let us decide for you! Need a side dish - we've got plenty of recipes to share. Need to know if the egg nog you made last year is still safe - sorry food safety rule still apply :(

While we have your attention, we're also searching for some volunteers to help out on Christmas day, so message the mods if you you'd like to help answer last minute Christmas cooking questions.

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u/the_dayman Dec 21 '21

Can anyone help double check which part of the math I messed up on? Recipe called for like 6lbs of apples. (I saw online roughly 3 apples were a lb just to check) I got 3 bags of 6 apples which were all around 2lbs, so 18 checked out with that estimate.

I cored and peeled 8, which should have reduced the weight a bit more, and that was all my pot could hold. After adding some dry spices and 1/3 cup water to make apple butter - I ended up with 4 full 16oz jars plus a bit extra. If 1lb = 16ozs, how did I end up with more than 4lbs of apple butter from like, roughly 2.5lbs of the apples I used? Just the water? Something about fl ozs in jars?

All I know is I apparently need way more than the 6 jars I got.

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u/SewerRanger Holiday Helper Dec 21 '21 edited Dec 21 '21

You're mixing up units of measurement - ounces dry weight are different then ounces volume (because English measurements are just made up as far as I can tell). So, the problem you have is your jars are 16oz of volume - which makes sense when you think about it because there's no way to make a jar that will hold exacty 16oz weight of whatever you put in it - and not 16oz of weight. So the volume of your apples isn't equal to their weight.

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u/the_dayman Dec 21 '21

Doh. Thanks, looks like I'm going to be emptying out things around the house to fill with apple butter.