Grams to Tablespoons

Grams turn into tablespoons through the weight of a tablespoon

A gram measures weight and a tablespoon measures volume, so there is no single “grams in a tablespoon”: it depends on what fills the spoon. A level US tablespoon of butter weighs 14.2 grams, of granulated sugar 12.5 grams, of all-purpose flour 7.81 grams. To turn grams into tablespoons (tbsp), divide by the weight of one tablespoon of that ingredient.

The spoon here is the US tablespoon: 1/2 US fluid ounce, 14.8 ml, and by definition 1 US cup = 16 tablespoons = 48 teaspoons. The weight of a tablespoon follows from one USDA FoodData Central figure per ingredient: USDA gives a cup of butter as 227 grams, so a tablespoon is 1/16 of it, 14.2 grams. Baking powder, baking soda, active dry yeast and ground cinnamon USDA lists by the teaspoon instead, so their tablespoon is 3 teaspoons: 4.6 grams of baking powder a teaspoon, 13.8 grams a tablespoon. One rule for every measure keeps the cup, tablespoon and teaspoon pages of one ingredient in exact agreement.

Three steps

1. Find the weight of one tablespoon of the ingredient — in the table below. For butter it is 14.2 grams.
2. Divide the grams by it. 30 grams of butter ÷ 14.1875 ≈ 2.11 tablespoons.
3. Round to a spoon you own. Measuring spoons come in halves, quarters and eighths: 2.11 tablespoons is just under 2 1/8 tablespoons.

What 30 and 100 grams of each ingredient come to in tablespoons

If the ingredient does not matter yet, start from how many tablespoons 100 grams is — every ingredient at once. The opposite question, how many grams a recipe’s tablespoons weigh, is on the tablespoons to grams page; smaller amounts are on grams to teaspoons, larger ones on grams to cups.

Where this actually comes up

• Butter from a European recipe.30 g of butter is 2.11 tablespoons — cut from the tablespoon marks on an American stick.
• Sugar in coffee or a sauce. 10 grams of sugar is 0.8 tablespoons; a recipe’s 25 grams, 2 tablespoons.
• Flour to thicken. 15 grams of flour for a roux is 1.92 tablespoons — flour is light, so it takes more spoons than sugar of the same weight.
• Honey and oil. 20 grams of honey is only 0.94 tablespoons, the same 20 grams of olive oil 1.48 tablespoons.
• Salt for brine. 50 grams of table salt is 2.74 tablespoons — table salt, not the coarser kosher salt, which weighs less per spoon.
• A packet of yeast. A 7 g packet of active dry yeast is 0.58 tablespoons, or 1.75 teaspoons by the USDA teaspoon.

Where USDA’s own spoon weights differ

USDA FoodData Central also lists a tablespoon for some ingredients. This converter does not use those portions — they would make a tablespoon disagree with its own cup — but checks every one against the derived weight and names any gap over 5 %. 11 of them agree within 1.6 %; the 2 that do not are named on their own result pages: unsifted powdered sugar (USDA’s tablespoon 8 grams, here 7.5 grams) and sour cream (USDA’s tablespoon 12 grams, here 14.4 grams). Spoon portions are small, and how full the spoon is moves them more than anything else.

Baking powder and baking soda

Both weigh 4.6 grams a teaspoon and 13.8 grams a tablespoon in USDA FoodData Central, so 1.45 tablespoons of either is 20 grams. They are still different products: baking soda needs an acid in the recipe and is several times stronger, so a tablespoon of one never replaces a tablespoon of the other. Each has its own row and its own pages.

Water: a gram is a milliliter

1 ml of water weighs about 1 g, so a US tablespoon of water weighs its own volume, 14.8 grams. For water the calculator uses no table: 30 grams of water is 2.03 tablespoons, the volume of 30 ml — the question the milliliters to teaspoons converter answers in teaspoons. Every other liquid — milk, oil, honey — uses its USDA weight, because a spoon of it is not a spoon of water.

Where the tablespoon and the gram come from

The tablespoon began as the spoon laid on the table for serving, larger than the teaspoon for tea. American cookbooks of the late 19th century, Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896 among them, made it a level measure, and the US tablespoon settled at half a fluid ounce, 1/16 of a cup. The gram was defined in France in 1795 as the weight of one cubic centimeter of water at the temperature of melting ice. Grams to tablespoons is where a recipe written for a scale meets a drawer of measuring spoons.

US, metric or Australian tablespoon

This page uses the US tablespoon of 14.8 ml. The metric tablespoon of the UK, New Zealand and Canada holds 15 ml, 1.4 % more — close enough to ignore in cooking. The Australian tablespoon holds 20 ml, 35.3 % more, so the same weight fills about a quarter fewer Australian spoons. Every result page names both figures under the answer. The tablespoon by volume alone is on the cups to tablespoons and tablespoons to cups pages.

Doing it in your head

Three anchors cover most recipes: a tablespoon of butter is about 14 g, of sugar 12.5 g, of flour about 8 g. So 100 grams of butter is about seven tablespoons, 50 grams of sugar four, and 40 grams of flour five. For anything else, divide the weight of a US cup by 16: a cup of honey at 339 grams makes a tablespoon of 21.2 grams.

Where the weights come from

Every weight on this page except water’s comes from a household portion in USDA FoodData Central, the SR Legacy dataset (the final release of the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference), taken for a level spoon. Each result page names the exact entry — for butter it is USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy entry 173430 “Butter, without salt”, portion “1 cup” = 227 grams, and 1 US cup = 16 US tablespoons. The same cup weights drive grams to cups and cups to grams, so the three measures never contradict each other. A heaped spoon weighs more than a level one; for baking, a kitchen scale is the exact answer.