I Own Four of This Tiny Kitchen Tool—I Can’t Cook Without It

I don’t think it’s possible to own too many measuring cups. I’ve been accumulating them for many years and yet I still manage to use them all multiple times a week. I usually pick them up when they go on sale or when I find them at estate sales. However, I’m willing to pay full price for my absolute favorite measuring cup.

An Instagram post from cookbook author Julia Turshen introduced me to the OXO mini angled measuring cup ($7) many years ago. Like a normal person, I bought just one of them to start. As I cooked my way through my favorite recipes, though, I noticed that any time I needed a quarter cup or less of a liquid ingredient, I automatically reached for my lonely mini measuring cup.

How I Use My Mini Measuring Cup

Whether I was measuring a quarter cup of oil for a cake or a tablespoon of soy sauce for a stir fry, the mini measuring cup allows me to mete out precise amounts of ingredients that can be messy if you’re trying to use a spoon (or a much larger measuring cup). The tiny tool also makes its way to my bar cart, where I use it to mix up cocktails and mocktails. I can’t be the only one who makes a huge mess trying to use a jigger.

It wasn’t long before my husband caught on and the measuring cup was in even higher demand, so we got a second one. Then a third. Then a fourth. Maybe you’ve heard that expanding a highway counterintuitively leads to worse traffic. It’s a similar story for these measuring cups. The more of them you own, the more you use them.

Even with four on hand, I still regularly use them all between dishwasher cycles, meaning I often resort to cleaning them by hand so I never have to do without them (the horror!).

It Makes Measuring Ingredients a Breeze

My favorite thing about this measuring cup is that, like the larger angled measuring cups that OXO sells, you can read the measurements from above instead of having to bend over to read them on the side of the cup, so accurate measuring is even easier. 

The tiny size also means that less of the ingredient gets left behind, stuck to the sides and bottom of the cup. When I use the mini measuring cup with sticky ingredients like honey or molasses, I lightly spritz the inside with cooking spray so the ingredient slides right out, leaving nothing behind.

Is it obsessive to own four of the same kitchen tool? Maybe, but the satisfaction of using this cute little cup instead of having to pull out my battery of mismatched measuring spoons is worthy of a little obsessiveness.

BUY IT NOW: OXO Mini Angled Measuring Cup