Using salt in boiling water

Research has told me that osmosis will prevent the salt from entering the pasta, thus keeping its bite.

Salt will draw water out making vegetables crisper and pasta 'al dente' rather than limp.

Darren

If that's right then a pan-full of cooking pasta could serve as a desalination device: cook pasta in sea-water, then wring the fresh water out of the pasta afterwards.

What works for us is not using salt. There are four in this family, and we buy a 200g pot of salt perhaps every two years or so. Some of that ends up round the back door frame to deter slugs.

Cor - you must use a lot of salt. That'd be around a 4 mole solution - that's 234g/litre.

Veg with less water is limp - it's the hydrostatic pressure in the cells that keeps them rigid. That's why veg goes floppy as it dries out.

To find the increase in boiling point, Delta T, for 10g salt in 500 ml water:

Delta T = i*m*K For common salt, NaCl , i = 2 Formula weight of common salt = 58.4 g/mole Number of moles of NaCl = 10/58.4 = 0.171 moles Molality of salt solution = 0.171 moles/0.5Kg = 0.342 molar K for water = 0.512 Therefore Delta T = 2*0.342*0.512 = 0.35 deg.C

i.e. not a lot.

(see the original calculation at

People add salt to improve the flavour. If you want to raise the boiling point significantly, use a pressure cooker.

The Twinings L-S is but a shadow of it's former self; barely any flavour these days. Get real loose L-S from a specialist tea supplier and you'll never bother with the Twinings stuff again.

Duh! My mistake. You're right.

This is perfectly adequate. SWMBO and I share one Tesco tea-bag in our two Denby mugs. You can forget all that Earl Gray and Lapsang Sooshong nonsense. She takes no sugar and I take about 0.25 teaspoon in that.

It's similar to the second one (except in that picture it looks solid, rather a filter).

I like the look of the first one (Bodum) which I've not seen before, as long as the strainer fits in regular mugs. Searching around, you can buy just the strainer part, and there's also a plastic version which looks almost exactly like mine, except mine doesn't say Bodum on it.

Cheers

Will that much dissolve? I often use as strong a salt solution as possible to stop my gums bleeding. (I rinse it out afterwards to avoid ingestion.) I never seem to get more than a few teaspoonsful to dissolve in about 300ml of water.

Perhaps it's much more soluble in hot water?

For pasta, it's a bad idea. It increases the cooking time needed and makes the pasta taste bad.

Why bother with a tea bag when you can get instant tea these days?

I seem to remember my Chemistry teacher saying that common salt is one of the few chemicals which this isn't true of. Its solubility scarcely varies with temperature.

Another Dave

I know you do. But it produces a vastly inferior end product and I (personally) hate having to add salt this way

tim

Sure. Every packet of pasta I've ever looked at must be wrong then, because they all say cook in salted water. I'd better tell my (Italian) parents too as they've spent their whole lives getting it wrong.

Really? And how long would it add to, say, a marked 10' cooking time, assuming that was true?

You mean, by making it taste slightly salty? It's possible to vary the amount of salt. And usually boiled pasta isn't eaten by itself.