Same for me. How boiling should it be? They never say. And there’s a significant difference in how long it takes to go from ‘initiating boil’ to ‘boiling over’ depending on the pot and the temperature. At least it doesn’t really matter with the things that I cook. I mostly just mix a bunch of stuff together and wing it instead of following a recipe.
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No no no.
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Heat a pot of salted water to a rolling boil (set the table while you’re waiting and lay out the butter.)
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Walk to the yard. Pick as many ears as you need immediately.
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Run, do not walk, back to the kitchen. Shuck the corn as you are running.
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Place the corn in the water and boil for five minutes.
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Enjoy.
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Congratulations on not saying you put your finger in the water to see if it feels hot.
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“Thank Heaven she’s now Someone Else’s Problem?”
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So is the variation in the size and state of ripeness of the corn cobs, so it’s a multivariate problem. I have the problem with blanching green veg before freezing; too much, kills the vitamin C, too littl, ends up chewy.
However, I cite my old chemistry teacher; it isn’t boiling till large bubbles are breaking on the surface (the initial small bubbles are dissolved air coming out).
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I think the difference between water at 99.5deg C (almost boiling) and 100deg C (definitely boiling) is moot for cooking purposes. Otherwise we have start considering altitude, barometric pressure, etc.
I don’t recall all my high school chemistry, but isn’t the long uncertain period a function of the extra energy needed to turn water from liquid to vapour?
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It’s complicated and was a big problem in early steam boilers.
Below 100C some water evaporates as water vapour and the rate of evaporative loss increases as the water gets hotter, but you can’t see it.
It takes a lot of energy to convert water to steam at a given pressure. But consider a small element of water next to the heat source in a boiler. If it starts to boil locally a small bubble of steam is produced. This insulates any water in contact with the hot surface so it heats rapidly and expands the bubble. As the bubble rises, the water around it is just below boiling and so the steam condenses at the margins of the bubble. To begin with, therefore, the bubbles will not reach the surface unless the water is very pure, when the water close to the heat source may become superheated and suddenly create an explosive bubble. This is called “bumping” and can cause damage to laboratory equipment - or early cast iron boilers which might explode due to repetitive shock.
At some point the water is very close to 100 degrees and the bubbles do not collapse before reaching the surface, so you get actual steam.
From a cooking point of view, however, whether the temperature is 95 or 100C makes little odds except that it is slower at low temperatures. The object is not to boil the water inside the food.
If you cook an egg in water at around 70C, I believe it is possible to set the yolk without setting the white, because the yolk has more protein and solidifies (due to protein degradation) at a lower temperature. But I’ve never bothered to try it.
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Define large and small bubbles please (with error bars for your measurements)?
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It depends on the size of the container. The generation of an appropriate formula is left as an exercise for the student.
(Also, I don’t do error bars. I do proper statistics.)
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Fill up a pot 3/4 full of water. Place on stove and heat. Check every 10 minutes. When the water stops changing behaviour/appearance, observe the bubble size.
So as not to waste good water and electricity, drop some pasta in the boiling water, cook for 7 (white) to 10 (whole wheat) minutes, remove from heat, drain, toss with pesto or warmed-up marinara sauce.
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You mean when the water has all boiled away and the pot is glowing red? 
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Pedant: you set the white without setting the yolk. Like soft-boiled eggs or the onsen tamago you get with ramen. Whites have protein — that’s why you can make meringue out of them. Yolks don’t have protein.
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This suggests that the white does not fully set until just past 70C, at which point the yolk is set. However, I’m not sufficiently hung up on whether I was correct or not to reproduce the experiment.
This article notes that the egg white has more protein than the yolk. But it also has much more volume. The yolk contains more protein per cent.
One of us is wrong, and I have the beginnings of a feeling it may not be me.
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OK, but I’m telling you, onsen tamago is awesome stuff. The whites set at 63C, if you want to be fussy, but I guess if you’re talking fully set as in “rubbery”, then you’re right and I’m happy to be wrong.
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I hope next time I get partnered with a man in martial arts he can accomplish at least two of the following:
- Able to follow the teacher’s instructions
- Fit enough to make it through most of the class
- Doesn’t continually critique my technique when I’m actually better than him
None of the women I get partnered with have any problem with these things…
(Sorry for the interruption, you may now return to your steamy discussions)
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Ugh, all three of those in one person, in one session? Sorry to hear you got stuck with that.
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I’d say the last two guys I got paired with each had two of those traits.
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Sorry. I left my auto thread derailer on.
Re your refreshingly on-topic post, I have a theory based on a gross generalization and a simplistic stereotype.
Women take martial arts to feel less unsafe in their daily lives. Men take martial arts to feel dominant, to feel they can kick anyone’s ass. Guess who listens to instructions better.
(This theory is less applicable to individuals who have committed to years of training.)
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I am always tired. I see a lot of advice about sleep hygeine, etc. But does anyone know of advice on how to get enough sleep when people wake you the fuck up with bright and/or strobing lights and/or helicopter noise in the middle of the fucking night?
I see one piece of advice, which suggests making sure your room is completely dark and completely quiet… and how the fuck do I do that? The blackout curtains do nothing!!!
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