How to Boil Water

Everything we know, everthing we learn starts somewhere. And the most fundamental cooking techniques apply to even the most impressive of dishes.

Mise en Place

Always read all the way through a recipe before you get started. Part of handling the unexpected is knowing what to expect to begin with.

Assemble you're ingredients intelligently. It doesn't make any sense to grind thirty pounds of meat for salami if it turns out your pink salt container is empty. Make sure you have all the equipment and that it's in good repair.

Ingredients

Quantity	Measurement	Ingredient	Notes
		water	cold from the tap

Cooking Methods and Techniques

• Boiling

Equipment

• Any pot, saucepan, or other stovetop-safe cooking vessel

Instructions

1. Put the water in the pot.
2. Put the pot on the stove, then turn the burner to "High".
3. Keep an eye on the pot and its contents. You will start to see small bubbles on the bottom of the pot, and steam will start to rise from the surface. Eventually, the water will be churning rapidly—maybe splashing onto and around your stove, so be careful!—and throwing off a lot of steam. This is called a full or rolling boil.
4. Carefully remove the pot from the heat and turn off the stove.

Cleanup

Use or empty the water. Dry out the pot or just allow it to dry. Put the pot away.

Lessons and Notes

The reason you turned the pot all the way to high has to do with time efficiency and food safety. It does not require as much time to get water to a boil if you just crank the heat at the outset. A lower heat takes longer, and if it's too low, it might never even get there.

Food safety isn't much of an issue with plain water, of course. But the same heating technique would apply to reheating leftover beef soup. If your liquid is too cool for too long—say, 70°F for a couple of hours—you'll create very happy conditions for very unpleasant bacteria.

There are certainly times you might not want to heat something so aggressively, but for water and similar liquids, here's a good rule of thumb: Bring it to a boil, then reduce the temperature to where you want it to be.

Liquid water at a boil remains at a constant temperature—the boiling point—while the heat converts it to steam. For pure water at sea level, that temperature is 212°F/100°C. Steam itself can get a lot hotter, though, so remember to use extra caution if you trap it in the container with a lid, or you're microwaving a package of frozen vegetables, etc.

If this was your first trip into the kitchen, you learned where the pots are kept, how to draw water from your sink, and how to work the stove. If you heated a lot of water, it might have taken longer than you expected for it to come to a boil. If you only used a little, it was probably pretty quick.

Where to Go From Here

Use about a gallon of water—make sure your pot is big enough that it's only about 2/3 full—and add about a tablespoon of salt. When the water comes to a boil, stir in a pound of dried macaroni and cook it for 5 to 8 minutes according to your al dente preference. Drain and add butter or olive oil, salt, and pepper for an easy (if plain) side dish.

Boiling salted water can also be used to blanch vegetables. Once you have some green beans blanched and shocked, for example, you can sauté them in a little olive oil and garlic, or serve them with dip, etc. You can use that same technique on carrots, broccoli, brussells sprouts, and most other firm vegetables.

If you turn the water down a little bit—to a simmer, for example—you can cook an egg in its shell. If you turn it even lower—to a poach—you can gently cook a shelled egg, a chicken breast, a salmon filet, a pear…

If instead of water you use stock or wine or juice for a cooking liquid, you can add that layer of taste to whatever you're cooking.

Just think about it. A couple of pears, half a bottle of leftover wine, (water as needed,) and a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar: Pears poached in wine make a simple, healthy, and elegant dessert.

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