When you are cooking noodles, dumplings or porridge, you must have come across a situation where the water boils more and more, the pot makes a gurgling sound, the white foam gradually rises and is about to overflow out of the pot, this phenomenon is called “puffing”, but why does this happen?
It’s the cause of the pandemonium!
Why cooking vegetables, meat will not have the phenomenon of puffing? In fact, from noodles, dumplings and rice porridge can find out the answer, these ingredients have a common point, that is, “starch”.
The white foam is actually “starch foam”!
When starch meets water and then heated, the starch dissolved in the water will produce “starch foam”, which is the white foam we can see with the naked eye.
How to relieve the puffing situation?
When this happens, don’t worry, just turn down the heat, open the lid, or add cold water, and the bubbles will calm down again until the heat continues and the temperature inside the pot rises again, and then the next round of bubbles will occur. Therefore, it is all related to “temperature”. When the temperature threshold for puffing is no longer reached, the phenomenon of puffing will naturally slow down.
Spoon, spatula also useful?
In addition to controlling the temperature, you must have heard the internet users share their tips, “Put a spoon in the water and cook together! The “spoon is placed horizontally on top of the pot”, “choose the shape of the pot like a frying pan” and other such tips to prevent the occurrence of puffing, and even Japan’s Daiso also launched a kitchen gadget, the shape of the round iron piece of “Kokukoku-kun”, claiming that when cooking noodles put into the pot together will not let the water overflow! These are not related to the temperature mentioned earlier, and what is the reason, there are ways to suppress the phenomenon of flopping pots?
The above practice is related to destroying the structure of starch foam, which seems to be simple, but in fact it has a lot to do with physics. Putting a spoon or iron product into the pot to cook together is to destroy the frequency of water rhythm in the pot, that is to say, starch foam is generated through a regular pattern, but the appearance of a spoon destroys such a path process, which in turn leads to the foam not being formed smoothly.
The principle of the wok and the spatula is to change the foam formation process through the structure of the wok. The mouth of the wok is very large and the sides of the wok are very slanted, unlike the general wok which has a straight structure, so the foam will not be able to “climb” up the rim of the wok. The same applies to placing a spatula at the mouth of the pot. By changing the structure of the foam path, the phenomenon of puffing will not occur.
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