How to Boil Water | Boil Water Recipe | Eat the Love (2024)

How to Boil Water, a gluten-free, grain-free, paleo-friendly, meatless Monday friendly, cane sugar-free, soy-free, peanut and nut tree-free, egg-free, dairy and casein-free, vegan, vegetarian, local and organic recipe. NOT water-free though. So if you are allergic to water, you’re out of luck.

By Irvin Lin

Forget all those “uni-tasker” items that take up so much space in the kitchen like the novelty whistling tea kettle (it whistles when the water boils!) or those hot water dispensers that are always sitting on your sassy-but-slightly-obsessed-with-wearing-sunscreen-all-the-time Asian friend’s counter. Making boiling water is as easy as buying $4 toast and way easier than making a Kouign Amann or a Green Shamrock Shaped Guinness Infused Potato Irish Cheddar Bread Corned Beef Sandwiches with Orange Mayonnaise. And, it’s just as much fun!

Now there are a million variables in boiling water, but I’m not going to get all persnickety and tell you how you need to use a scale to measure out the right amount of water to use. Nor am I going to tell you that you have to use that copper All-Clad pot or that you need the TOP notch ingredients like those the spring water drawn from the remote part of Canada which takes three days travel just to get to the location where it’s sourced. No, amazingly delicious perfect boiling water can happen with just basic everyday water and any old pot. Seriously. Just follow my easy step-by-step instructions, accompanied with a few process photo, to make sure you don’t make any mistakes in making the absolutely gorgeous fun-to-drink super-fun-to-make cup of boiling water!

Ingredients*

Directions
1. Find the perfectly sized pot for your water to sit in. The size of the pot is going to limit the amount of water you boil, so make sure to pick one that will hold the right amount of boiling water that you want.

2. Locate the sink in your kitchen and bring the pot to your sink. Turn the faucet to the “on” position, which means water will be running out of the faucet. If you are pushing the handle or turning the knob and no water is coming out, you are pushing or turning in the wrong direction. Try pulling or twisting the other way.

3. Run the water until it gets cold, as the end result will be better. I taste-tested cold water, lukewarm water and hot water myself then decided to run a focus group blind taste test with 25 of my favorite food blogger friends and all but one of them picked the boiling water that started with from cold water. I later found out that Sean, the sole dissenter, had a sinus cold and stuffy nose so his taste buds were totally off. Why he didn’t tell me up front, I don’t know. I’m never inviting him to one of my taste test focus groups again.

4. Fill the pot up with as much water as you would like to boil. There is no right or wrong answer to this. This is not a trick question. Just fill the pot up.

5. Turn the faucet off and walk the pot to your stove. Place the pot on stove top, over one of the burners. If you have an electric stove just place the pot on one of the circles on the glass that specify where the heat comes on (or if you are old school electric, place it directly on the electric coil itself). If you have an induction stovetop I hate you and you’re on your own.

6. Turn the heat up to high for the burner or electric circle/coil that you placed the pot on. You can certainly use medium or even low heat to boil water, but high heat is definitely recommended. You want to make sure to really sear the water surface initially with the high heat. This is called the Maillard reaction and it really gives the final boiling water a lovely flavor and color.

7. Now cover the pot with a lid. If you’ve lost the lid or the lid is so bent up that it doesn’t fit over the pot properly, than either grab a sheet pan or metal cookie sheet and cover the pot with that, or just skip covering the water. Just be forewarned that the water may take longer to boil, and the resulting water may be more concentrated in flavor because some of it will have evaporated in the heating process. But if you like a more concentrated water flavor, then by all means, don’t cover the pot.

8. Now wait until for the heat to do its job. If you covered the pot, you can periodically check underneath the lid to see if the water is boiling. Just be aware that the more you uncover the pot, the slower it will take for the pot to boil. So check JUST frequently enough to see if the water is boiling, BUT not frequently enough that you slow down the heating process. The range of checking usually is between 2-5 times but sometimes is more and occasionally less. Just try not to go over 8 times because then you look like an impatient fool. Plus the whole “a watched pot” thing…

9. The water is boiling when large rapid bubbles are vigorously appearing and are coming up from the bottom of the pan to the top of the water surface. If you only see small tiny bubbles, you haven’t fully reached the boiling point and you need to let the water heat ever so slightly more. Once the rapid large bubbles appear, you can turn the heat off. You have boiling water!

BONUS STEP
10. Carefully pour the boiling water into a drinking container of your choice. Mugs with handles are the preferred drinking container, but you can use glasses, or other heat proof drinkware, even cute mason jars wrapped in baker’s twine or polka dotted ribbon. Be careful that you don’t spill the boiling water on yourself or pick up the mason jars immediately because the boiling water is hot and will burn you**. Let it cool a bit to pick up or to drink.

Makes exactly 3 2/7ths cups of boiling water.

* please see #5
** I am not responsible for any burns you may suffer from drinking boiling water. Please check with your doctor or health care provider if burns do happen. This post was not sponsored by First Degree Therapeutic Burn Cream as I have never used it before because I practice common sense when it comes to drinking boiling water. All opinions are my own.