On one of my other blogs,A Year From Scratch, I put together a simplemake your own microwavable oatmeal packetsarticle. After reading this, Julie K. asked via Twitter,

@thefoodgeek: Why does oatmeal boil over so often in microwave? (I eat it with Cayenne)

Hi, Julie,

It is not the cayenne that causes your boil over, though that sounds like a fantastic addition to a morning treat. Even if you had just water and oatmeal, your bowl is likely to boil over. The reason is in the starch.

Starches are great for lots of things, especially thickening sauces. Flour and cornstarch are two popular starches used for thickening liquids. When you heat starches in water, the starch acts like the earbuds for your iPod or phone. Properly coiled, the cord for the earbuds take up no space and sit neatly in your drawer. But if you just toss them into your pocket with your keys and some change, soon you will not be able to remove a quarter without discovering that everything in your pocket is all tied together with the earbud cord. The starch molecules expand into ropes when heated in water and get in between the water molecules and whatever else you are thickening. This is handy when you do want to make a béchamel, pudding, or gravy, but not necessarily what you want in other circumstances.

制作意大利面时，要么在一个很大的锅中煮出意大利面，要么用大量的水煮意大利面，要么用意大利面和水在锅中放一些油。之所以这样做是因为，如果您使用较少的水，您会从面食中的面粉中抽出足够的淀粉来开始增厚的水。因为您的意大利面总是沸腾，所以它会迫使气泡进入淀粉液体，并且能够建造出可以溢出面食锅的淀粉和水（又名泡沫）的奇妙结构。

The reason why you would put oil into the pasta pot (though I don’t necessarily recommend it) is because the oil keeps the bubble structures from forming properly. It won’t keep the starch from thickening your liquid, but it insinuates itself in between the starch molecules and the water, or between different starch molecules, and makes the prevents the complex structures from forming. Consequently, you don’t get boil-over. (Of course, the drawback to this method is that you can end up with slippery pasta that doesn’t adhere properly to its sauce–so best to stick with a large pot of plenty of water.)

As you may have guessed, the same thing is going on in the oatmeal bowl. There is lots of starch in therolled oats，并且您只使用足够的水来正确烹饪燕麦片，这与面食在烹饪后排干的意大利面一样。燕麦片的奶油质地的一部分来自淀粉煮熟时将其增厚。但是，当它在微波炉中时，您几乎无法控制内部发生的事情，并且通常使用的碗大约是燕麦片所需的大小。因此沸腾。

您的选择是使用较大的碗，该碗将含有更好的沸腾，或者在烹饪之前将一些黄油放在燕麦片的顶部。后者具有美味的额外好处，这是为什么您需要在燕麦片中添加一些黄油的一个很好的借口。