厨房的奥秘是每周探索烹饪和食物周围的奇怪之处。它们可能是不应该在不应该失败的食谱，来自不同来源的建议，或者只是怪异的。如果发生在厨房中，您不确定为什么要发送tweet to The Food Geekto find out what’s happening.

AdventureInSoup asks via twitter:

Interpreting instructions is one of the most difficult parts of cooking. Sometimes there are important secrets hidden in basic instructions, and sometimes people just get bored writing the same thing over and over again. Even with something as well understood as basic temperature, we know thatmeasuring and calibration是一个问题。然后，当我们到达像沸腾一样模糊的东西时，好吧……

让我们从简单的位开始：液体的沸点是它从液体转变为气体的温度。非常简单，良好的初中物理学解释。甚至可能是小学科学。有一阵子了。因此，人们可能会认为，如果沸腾的东西，它一定是在沸点。同样，如果沸点有东西，它一定是沸腾的。立于推理，对吧？

Yes. Aaaaand… no. There are two basic problems with that line of thinking. First is that there are situations in which a liquid can be at or above its boiling point and still be a liquid. The most common occurence of this is when you microwave a liquid in a very clean and very smooth glass container. Boiling doesn’t just happen spontaneously. The bubbles want to form on something, and that something is usually an irregular point on the surface of your container. You’ve probably noticed when you’re boiling water on the stovetop, you often see columns of bubbles in the beginning coming from a couple of points, as if there were a small leak in the bottom of the container. These points, when used for forming bubbles, are called nucleation points, and they make it easy for liquids to bubble and, consequently, boil.

在微波示例中，没有成核点，这会导致液体加热至高于其正常沸点（也称为过热）。瞬间提供了形成气泡的表面，这些气泡会迅速形成，例如Diet Coke中的Mentos。由于与饮食可乐中的Mentos的许多原因相同。而且，由于水高于100°C，它可能会比普通水更糟。正如MythBusters所解释的那样，请注意您需要蒸馏水，因为成核点可以在溶解在水中的物品周围发展，而自来水总是将其溶解在其中：

More importantly, however, we know that there are degrees of liquids turning into gas. After all, we have a difference between simmering and boiling, where bubbles are formed and liquid is turned into gas. Then there’s a rolling boil and a full boil, which might be different from a regular boil. We should deviate a bit from the textbook definition of a boiling point to properly understand.

我们从关于减少调味料的文章液体可以变成气体而不会在沸点。毕竟，这就是蒸发的目的，并且在室温下液体很容易蒸发。让我们回到《还原酱》文章中的小猫类比。我们有一个充满小猫的房间，他们代表水分子，边缘几乎没有门。小猫不知道门，只有当它们碰巧走得足够快时会撞到墙壁时，它们才会经过它们，并发现它们是通过门。

小猫的速度表示水的温度。如果他们进展缓慢，那么很少有人会意外刷在墙上并掉下来。However, if they’re at the boiling point, then that means that they’re going so fast that it doesn’t matter where they are, they’re going to fast to stop before they would hit the wall and either bounce off and keep going*, or instead go through the door.

Remember that not every kitten has to be going at it’s maximum speed in order for the average speed of all the kittens to be at the “boiling point.” Some kittens could be walking around, some could be taking a nap. However, as more and more kittens get riled up, it makes it harder for the other kittens to sleep or just walk around, so they all get into the act eventually. While it’s only groups of kittens bouncing around at full speed, that’s basically a simmer. When all of them get into the act, you’ve got yourself a rolling boil.

To my knowledge, there are no international or national governing bodies that regulate the differences between a simmer, a boil, a full boil, and a rolling boil. Chances are that the last two mean exactly the same to anyone who uses the terms, and many would have difficulty distinguishing between those and a boil.

However, in general, a simmer is when you barely have any bubbles at all. It’s right at the edge between definitely liquid and maaaybe gas. A full or rolling boil is when you are making bubbles so quickly that no amount of sitting on the stove is going to make more bubbles come quickly. You are at maximum bubble creation. A boil would be between the two.

The reason you would use a rolling boil is when you don’t want the boil to go away after you add some ingredient. A popular example is pasta: if you’re going by boxed pasta directions, they’ll suggest you get to a rolling boil then cook for a certain amount of time. This ensures that you’ll have minimal temperature loss when you add the pasta, so that won’t affect cooking time. Aside from that, I really don’t know a reason why you need to worry about it. Boiling is rarely a precision act, so a minute more or less is probably not going to hurt much.

So, unless you are working from a finicky or unfamiliar recipe that you’re not ready to mess with, and the boil seems vital to preserving the cook time, I wouldn’t worry too much. If it’s pasta or potatoes or similar, there are better ways to determine of the dish is done, so use one of the proper methods.

* - 墙壁非常弹性，没有小猫在这个房间里受伤。只是你知道。