Prevent pasta water from boiling over with this trick

I always dutifully follow the pasta-cooking instruction ‘use a large pot with plenty of water, so the pasta can move around the pot properly’. But that also means I regularly end up with a pot that boils over slightly, especially when I get distracted and don’t turn down the heat in time. This woman found a solution…

Jessica simply places a wooden spoon across the pot of boiling pasta water. She shared her trick on TikTok, and a reader who wanted to know exactly how it worked did some research. She got the answer from Dr. Michelle Dickinson, author of the book Science in the Kitchen. This is her explanation:

Sandwich in the pot

‘The bubbles in a pot in which pasta is cooking are made up of water, air, and starch. The starch and water form a ‘sandwich’ layer that creates a structure capable of trapping air and steam inside. The hotter the pot, the more steam-filled bubbles form beneath the existing bubbles, causing them to take up more space than the pot can accommodate. At this point, the starchy water starts to boil over.

The bubble has burst

The wood the spoon is made of is important in this TikTok trick. Wood does not conduct heat well, so when you place a wooden spoon across the pot, it stays cooler than the pot and the bubbles. Because of this, and because of its rough, dry texture, the bubbles will burst on the spoon. At that moment, steam is released from the bubbles and immediately cools, creating a small, cooler flow of air. Even if only one bubble comes into contact with the spoon, the bubbles around it can burst because of the small shock wave caused by that bubble bursting, or because of the cooler airflow disturbing the surface of the bubbles. This reduces the number of bubbles at the top, and if they burst faster than new ones form, your pot should no longer boil over.’

@justtt_jessicaEverytime I cook pasta! ##lifehacks ##cooking ##fyp ##ThisCouldBeUs♬ Ultimate life hacks – Kelly – The Life Bath

Seeing is believing, we think, so we’re definitely going to try this ourselves. By the way, I’ve come across this tip before for tomato sauce (with the aim of keeping it at a very gentle simmer); but then with the spoon in the pot instead of across it, because of course it wasn’t nearly as full a pot. That way, you’ll immediately have a delicious plate of pasta with tomato sauce, and hopefully less to clean up!

Also read:

• 7 things you didn’t know yet about Italian tomato sauce
• 7 common mistakes when cooking pasta
• Italian pasta versus Asian noodles: what are the differences?

Source: The Kitchn