How Many Quarts in a Cup?

Divide the cups by 4, or sort them into groups of 4. Each full group is one quart, and anything left over stays in cups: 13 cups are three quarts and 1 cup, or 3.25 quarts as a decimal.

Half a quart is 2 cups, so you can also count in half-quart steps. 10 cups make 2.5 quarts, and 9 cups make 2.25 quarts, a quarter quart more than two.

Tiny amounts are better left in cups. 1/3 cup works out to 0.08333 quart, a number that is hard to measure with anything but a cup.

The imperial quart is 1,137 ml, or 1.201 times the US quart. It holds 4.804 US cups or 4.546 metric cups of 250 ml, so the American rule does not carry over.

Britain also uses one set of measures for dry and liquid goods: NIST Handbook 44 notes that British measures of capacity serve both. In the US, the dry quart is a separate, larger unit, so this page covers the liquid quart only.

When a pot or slow cooker lists its capacity in quarts, add up every ingredient in cups and divide by 4. The result is the volume you need before any room for stirring or bubbling.

A chili with 14 cups of ingredients comes to 3.5 quarts, so a pot that holds 4 quarts would be nearly full. A slow cooker rated at 6 quarts takes 24 cups to the brim, which leaves comfortable space for that batch.