None. Putting the pasta in cold water prevents it from sticking as it cooks (which is the whole reason for using huge quantities of boiling water in the other method) and I can detect no difference in consistency at the end.
I’m not a chef, just a cook. I steam veggies with one of these, not boil them. This only requires about an inch of water in the pot. They come out firmer, use less water, and generally cook in about ten minutes.
Okay okay - you’re the chefguy. I do prefer steamed veggies and will often steam them in the microwave with a bowl and plate for a lid, but I was wondering for things like mashed potatoes.
My contribution - when I was a kid I thought I was being clever by melting the butter before mixing it in to make dough. I couldn’t figure out why the crust was hard as a rock though. 
Mashed potatoes aren’t too critical, as they don’t need to retain their shape. I’ve cut up and steamed potatoes in the past for mash, but there’s no real advantage other than not using so much water. I do cube potatoes and steam them for potato salad, though.
That’s funny about the butter. Works well for biscuits, if you’re a hockey puck short of a pickup game.
Was it well water or city water? Because, you know, chlorine is not good for fish. Sometimes the municipal water that comes out of the tap here is so chlorinated it almost smells like bleach.
I have actually been told that you leave the dull side of foil out if you’re using it to cook, and the shiny side if you’re freezing something. I didn’t really question it, I just didn’t bother. But I have subsequently been assured that the difference is quite trivial in kitchen-level temperature ranges.
Storing cottage cheese upside down prevents mold. No. . .no, it doesn’t.
Not my myth…but one time when I was a teenager I made grilled cheese sandwiches for me and my stepdad. He got really pissed when he found out I put (Hellmann’s) mayonnaise on them, because hot mayonnaise would give you food poisoning. :smack:
I have always lived in cities. So, I guess that means it was city water.
It must sound silly. But I just feel so guilty for all the poor goldfish that I murdered.
How come none of those stupid adults who bought me all those goldfish never told me that if I wanted them to live for more than one or two days, I had to pay attention to the kind of water I would provide for their housing?
I think the people who bought me all those goldfish were about 90 percent aunts and uncles. I know they meant well. They thought they were making a young child happy. But didn’t they know anything about the care and feeding of goldfish?
Or did they just want to see me happy for a few hours and then after they left, they just didn’t care if I felt terrible that my poor goldfish died and I could never understand why.
They’re all dead now. So, I can’t even ask them. What a bummer!
Eggs:
Plunging hard-boiled eggs in cold water will make them easier to peel. No. It’s meant to stop the cooking process quickly, so the eggs don’t form a sulfur ring.
This is true: The absolute, hands-down best method for “hard boiling” eggs is to steam them, using a steamer like the one Chefguy linked to. For no sulfur ring and ease of peeling, steam your eggs for 12 minutes, then instantly remove and plunge into cold water and cover with ice. Trust me; you’ll never hard boil your eggs again. I’ve used this method for eggs straight out of the hens and had no trouble peeling. Amazing.
Vinegar in the water does help poached eggs to pucker a little and hold their shape, but I don’t use it and my poached eggs come out just fine.
Was going to share the beans one, but I see the salt myth has already been well debunked. I use a pressure cooker to cook beans. They never come out hard, salted or unsalted!
You can buy drops at the pet store that take the chlorine out of the water, or just let the tap water sit for 24 hours to remove the chlorine.
I never had fish myself, but friends who did informed me that one at the very least has to let tap water sit for a day to let the chlorine rise out of it. Or it could be boiled out, but then, as noted above, you would have to aerate it for a bit so that the fish would not suffocate. You parents could have bought you bettas, which are air breathers, but they do not get along well with each other, and if you keep them in a tank, you have to make sure they cannot get trapped under decorations and drown.
I only boil eggs for five or six minutes and never get the green ring. The trick I use for making them easy to peel is based on a device my mother once had: I have half a wine cork with a plain straight pin stuck through it, which I use to poke a tiny hole or two into the shell, to let water in. A quick rinse or two in cold water and they peel like a charm. Hen-fresh eggs I usually put a few more holes into.
I agree. Plus it’s much quicker, since you only have to boil up maybe an inch of water.
Tell that to the nutty hippie Facebook sites that I see. According to them, water does have a memory you see. But not for mundane tasks like cooking, but for something something hidden potential something woo something. :rolleyes:
Cecil again. The question asker is reasonably skeptical, but you do have to question the wisdom of creating a product that can harm your customers… and then not tell them about it!
Not if your supply also has chloramine. That won’t evaporate and you have to treat your water instead.
I was raised on the belief that you have to wipe mushrooms with a damp cloth to clean them because they will absorb water like a sponge, which will cause…something. Not sure what.
Anyhoo, Alton Brown shot that one down by weighing wiped vs soaked mushrooms before and after. The soaked mushrooms showed only a minute difference in their before and after weight compared to the wiped ones.
My Boy Scout troop was convinced that shiny-side-in was superior for foil dinners (wrap meat, potatoes, and veggies in foil, and stick them in the campfire coals), but it didn’t seem plausible to me that it would make a difference (even as a teenager, I had some instinctive grasp of thermodynamics). So we did the experiment, and I convinced them.
And I’m definitely trying the steamed eggs things, when next I have the occasion.
I think foil needs an air gap to reflect heat away. When it’s right on the coals it’s acting like a conductor of the heat. But what if it wasn’t touching the heat directly. If it’s surrounded by air, like being on the rack of an oven, would the shiny/dull side out change how fast the food heated up.
What a great idea. I can’t wait to try that the next time I need to hard boil some eggs.
Makes perfect sense. Steaming is a more gentle method of cooking than boiling (less chance of overcooking), and putting them in ice-water will stop the eggs from overcooking, and thereby prevent the green sulfur/iron gunk on the outside of the yolk.
I bet your best results of all would be to cook the eggs in a more or less sous-vide way by putting them in water kept at exactly 180 (or whatever temp you need), no more, no less, and leaving them for an extended period. No chance of overcooking whatsoever.
There’s no need to get that complicated, though. It’s easy enough to avoid the green ring even with regular boiling methods as long as you pay attention to your timing and technique.
That said, for soft boiled eggs, sous viding them can produce interesting results. (I don’t have that kind of patience, and my 6 or-so minute eggs via steaming are more that good enough for me.)
I steam mine for ease of peeling. The lack of a sulfur ring is a bonus.
I have tons of fresh eggs, and I hard boil a lot of them for sandwiches, salads or to devil for parties. Peeling a fresh hard boiled egg is a royal pain – unless you steam them. Honestly, it’s like magic! I know all the methods for poking holes, etc., but why go to all that fuss?
Six minutes, you say, pulykamell? Mine never seem quite done through for less than twelve, but I may cut it back to ten and then go from there. 