When cooking water and food, just a little distraction can easily lead to "bitter consequences" when they boil strongly and overflow, creating a mess. You will spend a lot of effort cleaning. However, with the following tips, you will be more proactive when encountering an emergency boiling water situation, minimizing the phenomenon of water overflowing from the pot.
A pot of bone broth, a pot of crab soup, soy milk, corn milk, porridge, even a pot of boiling water... anything related to water, when boiled on the stove, is at risk of overflowing from the pot and spilling all over the stove. Even if you detect it in time and open the lid when the pot boils strongly, the water will continue to overflow until you completely turn off the stove. This haunts many housewives, because once water or food spills onto the stove due to boiling too strongly, the cleaning and cleaning process afterwards will be extremely tiring. Not to mention that food overflowing also causes a great waste.
Why does boiling water overflow the pot?
Water always contains a certain amount of dissolved air. When you cook something and reach the boiling point, the temperature gradually increases, causing this solubility to decrease and the hot water will quickly and strongly transform from liquid to gas. The bubbles when we heat water are steam (gas) formed right in the liquid. The higher the temperature, the gas will escape, following the pot wall to the water surface. Initially, the steam will form small air bubbles. When the water reaches boiling temperature, these steam bubbles will link together to become large enough and go to the surface. They will continue to expand, always tending to escape from the water surface and cannot accumulate in the water. This phenomenon will continue until they overflow the pot.
With the same mechanism, the amount of steam will continuously escape until it is dry. This is why you only need to be a little distracted to spend the whole day cleaning the kitchen and scrubbing burnt pots.
So how to prevent boiling water from overflowing the pot? Follow this simple method
Place a wooden ladle/spoon across the mouth of the pot
When the water is about to boil, open the lid, take a wooden ladle or spoon or utensil, and place it across the mouth of the food pot. This is considered a strange but very effective tip and has a completely scientific basis. This is explained as follows:
Wood is inherently afraid of water because it does not easily absorb water. When bubbles fill the pot, they will continue to grow, expand in size until they overflow and then crumble. However, the wooden ladle will prevent this by breaking the surface of the bubbles in the pot, preventing them from continuing to grow and overflow the pot. In simple terms, when water meets something that repels water, it will “retreat” itself. Bubbles that no longer have water to support them will burst before they can increase in size and overflow.
However, it should be noted that wooden spoons are only hydrophobic when they are relatively dry. When water overflows close to the surface of the pot, touching the spoon, the spoon will become wet, can absorb water again and they will lose their effect. At this time, bubbles continue to form and can overflow again.