Wow. Pasta water is flammable.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

After many years of cooking and eating pasta I did something today I didn’t even know was possible.

I started water on fire :wink:

I don’t use oil, the only thing in the pot were water, salt, and pasta. I got a bit clumsy with my stirring toward the end and splashed a decent amount out of the pot. About 2 seconds of violent flash boiling, then wooosh! The entire pot was covered in fire for about 2 seconds.

I know flour starch is flammable, and Starch bleeds into the water, but I didn’t realize that much did. With all of the splashing and boiling over I have done over the years, that has never happened before.I must have hit a magic point of starch density, and temperature where the water boiled out of the underpan evenly and left the starch precipitate to ignite.

2

To clarify, the fire was all outside the pot, not inside, just covering it. I’m not quite clever enough for that one yet.

3

You’re my new hero. The only thing I’ve ever unintentionally set ablaze was the microwave, whilst attempting to quick-cook some brown-n-serve rolls.

4

Once I started a brief but very high and scary grease fire by throwing some cheap, very iced-up fries into a skillet of hot oil. It was very messy.

Oh, and the word you want is “inflammable”. Things don’t become “flamed”, they become “inflamed”. I think Strunk and White said it best:

5

Messers Merriam and Webster say flammable is also acceptable.

As does the fire extinguisher on the wall near me.

6

I was pretty sure they were trying to phase out “inflammable” because of the confusion it causes due to “in” usually being used as a negative prefix. Inoperable, incoherent, inexhaustible, indeed. Ok, not that last one.