How to Boil Water Faster

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By Erik Lynch
User-Submitted Article

Article Rating: (7 Ratings)

Stupid tricks to boil water, and the answer to the question, "Which boils faster? Hot or cold?"

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

A pot
A stove top
Water

Step 1

The key to this process is approaching it rationally, and more or less reversing the intuitive steps to boiling a pot of water. We usually measure the water, put it in the pot, put the pot on the stove, and then turn on the stove. This is backwards.
Step 2

Look at the process of boiling a pot of water in terms of transferring heat into water. Energy must me converted from gas or electricity into heat on a stove top, then transferred into a utensil, and further into the water. With this in mind, consider how long it takes to heat up an electric stove, and turn on the stove FIRST. Burning gas becomes hot pretty quick, so it's not as important on a gas range.
Step 3

The second step is to put the pot on the hot stove as soon as possible. It takes a little while to measure water, and in the meantime your pot could be absorbing a significant amount of heat, which will transfer very quickly into water.
Step 4

Add the water as you measure it, and COVER IT. If you put your hand over boiling water, you feel the sensation of heat, due to the heat transferring into the air, and then into your hand. When you cover your pot, you contain more of the heat. Also, when you lock in the evaporating steam, pressure builds, and more pressure always means more heat.
Step 5

This step seems simple, yet most people probably don't do it. CRANK IT UP! Crank that dial to 8! It's water, you're not going to hurt it. The only reason to turn back the heat at all is due to the inherent trajectory of the heat created by a gas stove. Make sure the flame isn't sprouting beyond the pot, because then a lot of heat is slipping away through the air on the outside of the pot, and that's just wasteful.
Step 6

When water reaches a boiling point, it CAN NOT get hotter (under stove top conditions). The more heat you force into it, you will equally lose in evaporation. One way to force the boiling point of water to be hotter, is to add salt, and then your pasta will cook better, but it will take longer to reach a higher temperature.
Step 7

And finally, the big question, DOES cold water boil faster than hot water? The answer is no, regardless of the common household urban myth. Occasionally, common sense does prevail. If you think about it, cold water has to BECOME hot water before it becomes boiling water. The thing is, for sink water to become hot water, it has to pass through the water heater, which is less sanitary than your regular plumbing, and if your house is old enough to have lead pipes, running hot water through them will actually extract more poisonous lead than cold. You could always run hot tap water through a Britta filter but... why would you?

Comments

bluehazel said

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on 9/20/2009 Please explain the reference to the water heater being less sanitary. This is a new thought to me, but maybe it would explain why there seems to be more debris in my distiller if I use hot water. Of course, there's probably a concentration of lime in the water heater since we have hard water.