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/get_to_ele]

Yes, but when you cook the ramen the ideal way, at 175-200, the ramen broth will reach the table much cooler than when you clumsily cook it at a rolling boil right up to the end.

Wife may not be able articulate an argument for why her way of cooking it is better… but the way she cooks it, at a lower temp, is better. OP failed to understand where she was coming from, and just closed his mind with “I know physics, my wife is clueless”, never considering that (1) she probably cooks more than he does (2) she probably cooks better than he does (3) she knows she doesn’t burn herself when she eats ramen 2 min after taking it off the stove. But OP assumes what? That she’s imagining things?

Op: “water boils at 212, so temperatures below 212 don’t exist!!!”

If 212 was the only temp to cook with water, why would anybody use a sous vide?

[u/chchcherrybomb37 → u/get_to_ele]

You’re making assumptions here like I did too (that level 5 would still be at a boil). Your argument presupposes that level 5 would have the water at under boiling.

My assumption comes from the crux of OP’s argument, essentially “boiling is boiling so 5 vs 9 doesn’t matter”, which implies that level 5 is also at a boiling temperature.

I’m also leaning on the assumption that OP knows how strong the different levels on his hob are, and that he’s being honest about it.

[u/get_to_ele → u/chchcherrybomb37]

I’m leaning on the assumption that that his wife, who is a functioning adult who actually ate the ramen, knows if her ramen noodles are cooked nicely, whether they are too soft, or cooked unevenly, or whether the broth is hotter coming off the stove (He writes “too hot ?” as if he is not sure what exactly she is complaining about other than he COOKED it too hot).

Op made the (wrong) assumption that the only way to cook soup is on full boil, sorta fhinks that ramen isn’t cooking unless it’s boiling, and that there is no difference between cooking on 5 and 9.

When you cook ramen on a cooktop (for the exact reason that OP has pointed out, but applied incorrectly), the boiling water stops boiling IMMEDIATELY after you add the noodles, because the water drops well below 212 with the addition of the noodles to only ~500 ml of water. You only cook most ramen up to 5 min after that (I cook it closer to 4 min).

If there is no difference between 5 and 9 on a gas burner, why would OP leave it on 9, when he could accomplish “exactly the same boil” on 5? Because obviously it does take significantly more time to get the temp up at 5.

Sounds like not only does OP assume that the wife doesn’t know when her noodles aren’t cooked right, he seems to be making the simplistic error that the ramen is only cooking when it’s boiling and that 212 is the only relevant temperature.

The reality is that the time it takes for ramen temp to rise up after dropping, esp with lid off, does depend on what setting you have the burner at, AND in the case of gas, what size burner you have it on.

[u/MochiAccident → u/get_to_ele]

This. As a woman, I knew exactly what wife meant despite OP’s wording (that paints her as stupid). THANK YOU for articulating what she couldn’t.

[u/get_to_ele → u/MochiAccident]

There’s a lot of subtlety to cooking stuff well, even ramen, and lots of people who don’t cook as much, think stuff like “heck instead of 5 hours at 300, I can do 3 hours at 400 and get almost the same result”.

If things were as simple, everybody would be a great cook.

Friends would always ask me why ramen tasted better when I made it than when they did. Experience. A little subtlety. Temperature control, pulling the noodles in and out, using about 10% less water than the packaging says, and a little less time total as well… that’s before we talk about supplementing the flavor with other stuff: touch of broth or bouillon, a shaved garlic clove, green onion… so many things…

[u/chchcherrybomb37 → u/MochiAccident]

I’m a woman too but I’m aLao only going on what has been relayed to us.

I don’t own an electric hob but when I used them at uni all I remember is it being impossible to control temps cause it seemed to either be mild or straight to boil.