Besides, "Shattered Kitchen Myths, this thread includes “Shattered Cooking Myths” as well as “Shattered Old Wives Tales” too. Please feel free to throw in any other shattered myths that you would like.
When I was a kid, I once read that if you heat room temperature tap water to the boiling point and then let it cool back down to room temperature, it would heat back up to boiling much faster than an equal volume of tap water that had never been boiled but both of them start at the same temperature. Well, guess what?
I recently tested that “Old Wives Tale” and the difference is very marginal. Maybe 5 to 10 percent faster. But 10 percent is really stretching it.
During my many years from childhood to adulthood I had often boiled a cup or two of water. Many, many times! And you know what? It is seriously much faster to take some cold tap water and heat it to boiling in an electric kettle than it is to pour it into a pot and let it heat to boiling on the top of the stove. Maybe 2 or 3 times as long. I guess I really should have provided some exact figures. But it’s too late now.
Anyway, I used to heat a big pot of water to the boiling point in the morning and then, after it cooled, I would draw from it all day long in the mistaken belief that I was achieving something worthwhile by following that stupid, wrongful old myth.
When I think back to all the time and electricity that I wasted heating water to boiling in a pot on the stovetop instead of in an electric kettle, I just seethe with anger at that stupid Old Wives Tale.
I wonder how many other kitchen myths and old wives tales anyone else here can shatter and save people a bunch of time and money.
When I was a little kid (in the days when there was no good reason to be in the house and kids ran around outside all day) we believed that if you were out of breath and painting hatd and drank a glass of ice water really fast you would drop dead. Yup. That’s what we thought. Never tested it. Too scared to.
I should have organized my first post better. I should have explained there were actually two myths that I was trying to shatter.
The first was that if you heated water to the boiling point and then allowed it to cool back down to room temperature, it would then boil faster than if you just took ordinary tap water that had never been boiled and heated it to boiling. It will. But the difference is so marginal it is almost negligible.
The second was that it was very much faster to boil water by heating it in an electric kettle than it was to pour it into a pan and then heating it over top of a stove on a stove top burner. This second tip will save you far more time and money than the first because it is very much faster to bring tap water to a boil in an electric kettle than it is in a stovetop pot.
My sister, who is rational in most other respects, insists that water heated in the microwave will cool faster than water heated to the same temperature on the stove.
“Salting the water makes the pasta cook faster because it lets the boiling water get hotter.” Not at the usual amount of salt added. To get a two degree C raise, you’d have to add 230 g of salt per liter of water. That’s roughly a cup of salt per quart of water to raise the temperature roughly four degrees F. Ain’t no one cooking sketti in that kind of brine!
It’s a common belief that dry beans cooked with salt will never get tender, or will have tough skins. It’s not true. The salt may increase the cooking time a little bit, but they will get tender nonetheless. Also, dry beans soaked in salted water will take less time to cook than will beans soaked in unsalted water.
On the other hand, acids will keep beans from getting tender.
It is mainly for added flavor, no? In other words, you should still do it?
Some people add a splash of olive oil to the water. Don’t do this. Aside from making cleanup more difficult, it keeps your sauce from adhering to the pasta, reducing flavor. If your pasta is sticking you need to stir it more.
If the pan and the water start at the same temperature in trials A and B, and there’s the same amount of water, and the air pressure is the same, and the same amount of heat is applied, why would there be any difference?
If you use the same pan and the leftover water in trials A and B, and it boils faster in trial B, it’s because one of the variables changed, most obviously that there’s less water in the pan, then that your time measurements were not accurate, then that the heat application was different, and finally that your plane was at a higher altitude for trial B.
In most kinds of trials, I would have to agree with you. Inanimate objects have no memory. Very true.
But water that has been brought to a boil and then allowed to cools is a diff case (I think).
Why? Because the oxygen content of the water has been reduced as a result of the boiling.
So, when it is heated again, it will be brought to a boil in a shorter time.
I’m guessing that if it is allowed to cool and remains in that state for a very long time, then it may well be true that it will take just as long to be brought to a boil again.
I’m not an expert. That’s for sure and I could easily be wrong. But, it should make for a very interesting test. Although, I believe someone on this board will know the answer and will have the credentials to back it up. So it probably will not be necessary to actually try and run a test.
It should make for an interesting experiment in any case.
I think the expression, “the dice have no memory” or “the roulette ball has no memory” originates from games of chance. In that case, there is nothing about dice or a roulette ball that would cause them to have any memory.
But water may well be different because of the oxygen content contained therein.
Hopefully, someone with a Masters or PhD in Physics will be able to settle this issue and I look forward to that.
Previously boiled water and tap water aren’t the same even if they’re now at the same temperature. Since household water isn’t pure H2O, the boiled water will have a slightly different chemical composition depending on what has boiled off. What is left behind is not exactly the same as tap water. I don’t know if that’s enough to cause a difference, but there is a difference.
Another thing to remember is that boiling water isn’t always at exactly 212 degrees. So it could be that pre-boiled water starts boiling sooner, but that could be because it’s boiling at a different temperature than the tap water because of different levels of impurities.
I well remember as a youngster buying goldfish and they would always mysteriously die all the time. I never understood it why. But I believe there are several reasons for that.
One reason is that I would foolishly take the contents of the goldfish bowl and clean it out thinking I was doing my pet fish a real big favor in cleaning their home. Then I would dump the contents into a fresh new bowl of water but that would kill the fish real quick.
The reason? The new water was at tap temperature which is much colder than room temperature and that would kill the fish almost instantly. I’m sure you know that when you let the tap water run for a while, it becomes very cold.
But, another reason is that if I just left the fish in the bowl and didn’t clean it, the oxygen content would become depleted and the fish would die after a day or two. I figured the Universe was against me and I just couldn’t win with the freaking Goldfish. So, I just stopped buying them.
I always wondered about those little machines on aquariums that blow bubbles into the water? They are required to put oxygen into the water. So, even if I can’t see any oxygen in the water, it is there and when it disappears, the fish die. Oxygen exists in water in very tiny droplets. When fish consume the oxygen the size of the droplets are reduced to a size where I can’t see them.
By the way, as I said, I am no expert. I am just telling you what I have figured out for myself over the years. But I can’t be certain that what I’m telling you is some kind of Gospel. It just makes sense to me. So as to the question, if you bring water to a boil, it is the Oxygen content of the water that causes the bubbles and that is what makes water boil. It is the Oxygen being forced out of the water.
When the water cools, the bubbles disappear but that has little to do with the oxygen content. The oxygen is no longer in the water and water with no oxygen in it will boil faster than water containing Oxygen.
I sure do wish that someone who is expert in Physics would come in and explain this so that I could be sure of the truth. Because I will be very embarrassed if I am wrong about most of this.
That’s just simple science, not mythology. Your electric kettle is going to have the heating element either immersed in the water, or directly contacting the water vessel in some intimate way with a lot of surface area, so as much heat as possible is going to be conducted from the heating element to the water. When a normal kettle is sitting on an electric burner (like a classic spiral Calrod element), the burner isn’t making such awesome contact with the actual kettle, and as a result, you likely have less surface area in contact with the element, and the rest of the heat is via radiation or convection, which is much less efficient.
Myth: You need to have a huge pot of water to properly cook spaghetti without it sticking together, and it must come to a rolling boil before dumping the pasta in the pot.
Reality: It’s much faster and more energy efficient to do the following: use a large-ish skillet. Put your pasta in the pan. Put enough cold water in the pan to cover your pasta. Add some salt for flavoring. Bring the whole thing to a boil (cover, if you wish) and cook for the appropriate time.
Putting the pasta in cold water will prevent it from sticking together; the amount of water is far less, so it boils more quickly; you don’t have a huge, heavy pot of hot liquid to deal with.
So you heat the pasta in the water - you don’t heat the water first then add the pasta? Does this make any difference in the outcome of the pasta?
If you are correct then I love this idea! I hate using a huge pot of water; it’s dangerous to dump and is such a waste of time/energy. Great stuff!
Heck, you’re the chef - do you recommend this practice with any other boiled foods? I already do this for rice. What about the starch veggies? Potatoes, carrots, squash?