Bring the Pot of Water up Faster by Heating Half of It in the Microwave
It doesn’t take hours to boil water, but sometimes you are in a hurry. This microwave oven trick can almost halve the time it takes to bring water to a boil.
Even if you’re a professional chef, a microwave can come in handy for a lot of things. This is a great tool, especially if you want to cook pasta a little faster. If you’re in a bit of a rush, Serious Eats’ J. Kenji Lopez-Alt suggests you speed up the boil process with a microwave:
… if you want the pot to boil faster, fill it halfway with water and place it on the stove. Place the other half in the microwave for a couple of minutes, then place them together. It will boil about half the time when cooked on a clean stove.
By the time you add the water to the microwave, the water in the pot will start to boil, making sure the entire pot is very quickly heated to boiling point. Simple but effective. You don’t add or change anything in your recipe, and you can still cook anything that you cook the traditional way without nuclear processing.
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