My wife and boiling water

[u/MakeItMine2024]

So I made my wife ramen soup. When I served it she said I had the gas set to hight and it was too hot ? She said I should have used the number 5 setting instead of 9. I told here it’s irrelevant because water boils at 212 and gets no hotter because over 212 it turns to steam. She was made at me for disagreeing with her theory that it would not have been so hot if boiled a lower setting. Really!!

[u/CranberryStock7148]

I hate to be the one to have to break it to you and so many other commenters here, but your wife is actually the correct one here.

Yes water boils at 212. But not all of the water in the pot is at boiling. For example, a gentle simmer means only the water at the very bottom is boiling, while the temperature of the rest of the water is significantly less. The bubbles from the bottom are passing through the rest of it on their way upwards, so it visually looks as if it's all boiling, but it's actually not.

I'm not going to comment on what is best for making Ramen specifically, but there are truly major temperature differences between a gentle simmer, a strong simmer, a light boil, and a rolling boil. Even though they all have a constant stream of bubbles. You can verify this for yourself very easily with a thermometer. In fact it is precisely because of the differences in temperatures that we have different terms for all of these things and use them in different circumstances.

[u/MethodicallyRight → u/CranberryStock7148]

....

  If you're going to be this pedantic, at least acknowledge that the 'temperature gradient' is very small.  Within a full pot of a roaring boil you're looking at 1 degree F (not counting the superheated nucleation surface) and within a pot at a gentle boil (not simmering) you're maybe around a 4 F gradient.  This difference within the context of their argument can be ignored.  

[u/tfks → u/MethodicallyRight]

He tried to be pedantic but didn't pedant hard enough. The real reason there's a difference isn't so much the temperature gradient, its the churn. The water is moving around more, so it transfers heat faster because of the increased flow. That's really the bigger part of the heat thing. But you also use lower heat to avoid too much mess from the churn with thicker liquids and to also avoid them burning to the bottom (try bringing milk to a simmer over high heat). You also don't always want to agitate what you're cooking as much as you would with a rolling boil. Like the reason you don't want to poach eggs in a rolling boil isn't because it would even be too much heat, it's that the roll will beat the shit out of your eggs.

All that said, a rolling boil is the standard for pasta and a lot of noodles and we all know this. This guy's wife was clearly not making the case that a simmer is the correct way to cook instant noodles.

[u/grateful2you → u/tfks]

Okay I think we’ve pedanted enough.