Surely you have ever gotten lost when cooking the pasta and the water has overflowed leaving everything lost with a rather unpleasant whitish foam. With this simple, scientifically proven trick, this will never happen to you again.
Pasta is undoubtedly one of the most popular foods that exist, it is very easy to prepare, it can be stored for months in the pantry (if it is dry, of course) and it is absolutely delicious.
Cooking pasta is a very simple process, you just have to put it in boiling water for a few minutes and strain it correctly (something that, as we have already mentioned, is not as easy as you think).
And be careful, don’t forget that you never have to throw away the water to boil pasta because it has a surprising utility that not everyone knows about.
The only thing you have to be a little careful about is controlling the temperature during the process so that the water does not come out, at least until now, since in case you did not know there is a very simple trick, which is also endorsed by science, to prevent the water from cooking the pasta from overflowing from the pot by spraying everything.
The trick is very simple and It simply consists of placing a wooden utensil, a kitchen spoon or spatula, on top of the pot transverse shape as a lid.
To better understand this trick, you must know why the water in the pasta overflows. The cause is the starch molecules in the pasta that seep into the water and make the bubbles more resistant.
These bubbles form a thick layer of white foam on the surface of the pot that prevents steam from escaping.
As the minutes go by, the surface tension of this layer ends up yielding to the pressure of the water vapor, and when it breaks abruptly it ends up causing the water to overflow, dirtying everything.
Why does putting a wooden spoon prevent the pasta water from running out? It has a scientific explanation based on two of the most remarkable properties of wood: it is good at absorbing water and bad at conducting heat.
When the starch bubbles when touching the cold and dry wood they break preventing the foam layer from forming and allowing the steam to be released in a constant way.
That is to say, the surface tension of the starch bubbles yields to the wood and explodes on contact causing a chain reaction that ends up adjacent bubbles also exploding.
As the wooden spoon is much more absorbent and heat resistant than, for example, metal spoons, it allows you to control the foam for longer than with a metal utensil.
This trick so that the water from boiling the pasta does not come out of the pot is not infallibleIf the temperature is too high and the cooking time is too long, the wood will lose its properties and will eventually give way, although it should be effective for the quantities and cooking times of the dry supermarket pasta that we all usually consume.
