How to Boil Water: Cooking For Men

Boiling water is a valuable kitchen technique. But it seems that you've never actually done it yourself. How do you boil water?

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A pot with a lid
• Water
• A tea kettle if you want to make a hot beverage

1. You may wonder why you need to use a tea kettle in order to make boiling water for a beverage. Why not just always use a pot?
   
   Some brave men boil all their water in a pot, but the purpose of a tea kettle is two-fold, it whistles in order to tell you when the water is boiling (or reminds you that you put it on in the first place while you are on the fifth level of Medal of Honor).
   
   The tea kettle also only boils water. This is important, because if you boil water in a pot that you cooked onions in the night before, no matter how clean the pot is, your boiling water may pick up an aftertaste.

2. Fill the tea kettle with water. If you are a tea purist, fill the pot with cold water. If you want to boil water really fast and aren't a very pure person in general, fill the tea kettle with the hottest water possible from your tap. This means your water will boil very quickly, and possibly save energy.

3. Let that water boil. It's going to boil a lot faster with an electric stove set to high. But don't burn down your house, condo, or apartment. Remember that if you leave a pot of water boiling for a long period of time, the water will evaporate until it's completely gone. Then you will be cooking an empty tea kettle at high heat. A great recipe for a fire disaster. Keep an eye on your boiling water and don't let it boil away.

4. Maybe you don't like hot beverages. Maybe you want to cook macaroni, noodles, or something that requires boiling water.
   
   Ask yourself if you have the skills required to boil dangerously hot water on a flaming stove. If you aren't up to the challenge, boil it in the microwave.
   
   However, you can't boil a lot of water in the microwave easily, so there may be a time in life when you have to boil water on the stove.

5. Find a pot. Fill it with water. Put a lid on it. When the water boils, the lid will start to rattle. This may be anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes later. If you have the heat cranked up to high it will boil faster, but also introduces the possibility that you will get distracted and have all the water boil away, which is, as stated previously, a fire hazard.

6. After the water has boiled in the pot, move onto the next cooking step. One of the secrets of properly boiling water is that if water isn't boiling, it's not not hot enough to cook with.
   
   Hot water doesn't cook noodles. Hot water doesn't cook ramen. Hot water doesn't correctly steep tea. Don't be impatient. Let the water actually come to a rolling boil before you use it for the cooking task at hand.

Tips & Warnings

• Boiling water is dangerous. If you spill it on yourself, take off the article of clothing it spilled on immediately. It will continue you to burn you until you remove the article of clothing and place the affected area under ice cold water.
• If you spill it on your skin, place the area under cold water immediately.

[Haoie]

on 9/22/2008 If you can't boil water, well, cooking might be the least of your problems.

[slphilbrick]

on 9/12/2008 I found this article quite entertaining actually :-)
An article on how to boil water.... who'd have thought? But then, the bachelor that eats out or eats frozen dinners might really need this info ! (Don't make the leap from this article to my article on the top 10 kitchen utensils/tools though..... wayyyy too much to take in all at once !! ;-) )