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Food Items Self-Segregating in a Boiling Pan

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Anonymous

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tonight, as i was cooking my dinner, i experienced something very wierd!

i had sliced carrots and beans boiling in water in the same pot (yeah yeah steaming is better but i havnt got one yet).

yes, hard to beleive that i am into cooking and good food. i bet all you arses last friday cant put healthy eating and my gutter mouth and beer drinking together. well, i am a man of many angles.

so. as they veggies are boiling away, i notice that the carrots stay on one side and the beans on the other.

so i give it a stir...which mixes em up a bit...and then they go back to apartheiding themselves!

cool huh?

it was almost a clean division between the two veggies.

tomorrow night i am out, so someone try some other veggies in the same pot and let us know what happens.

i reckon the carrots are superior and dont want anything to do with those skinny green bastards.
 
guttersnipe said:
so. as they veggies are boiling away, i notice that the carrots stay on one side and the beans on the other.
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What sort of beans? Were the carrots sliced into disks? Objects of different sizes or shapes will often sort themselves out when they're mixed together and agitated. Certain typesof industrial sorting machines work on that principle.
 
I really can't be having with carrots cut into circles :hmph: yuk
Either cut them into julienne type sticks or don't have them at all, that's what I say.
 
Mayhap you have a slope on your cooker? I imagine it's rare for one to be perfectly level, mine certainly isn't.

Agree wholeheartedly Lemon, sliced carrots remind me of school dinners, i won't give them the time of day.
 
Pah, I buy my carrots pre-cut in microwavable bags.
 
windwhistler, that must be it. although, wierd for them to be separated....vertically? or laterally....vertically.

the beans were those long ones, cut in half and the carrots were in disks.

well, lemonpie and beakboo WONT be invited to MY place for dinner! :blah:
 
I know I'm going to be sorry I asked, but....

What difference does the shape of the same food matter? Seriously, I want to know! My husband will eat spaghetti noodles in spaghetti, and elbow macaroni in Mac and cheese. That's it! He says the other shapes of pasta don't taste the same! ARGHHH! One time I didn't have spaghetti noodles, so I used fetticini, he would not eat it. Boy, sometimes I miss him. (KIDDING!)

:laughing:
 
I would hypothesise that the separation had something to do with the convection currents at work in the boiling pan.
The water is heated to boiling at the bottom, normally towards the middle, (assuming the heat source is suitably smaller than the pan itself). It rises to the top of the pan, cools, and the cooler water descends down the sides of the pan back to the middle.
I reckon this action, combined with the differences in size and mass of the two vegetables, created a sorting action, though exactly how I cannot guess.

If the separation phenomenon continues when you buy a steamer, or occurs to the vegetables when they are in the rack, you may want to think about having your kitchen excocised.
 
This phonomenan doesnt seem to appeal to microwave foods :eek:(
 
lemonpie said:
I really can't be having with carrots cut into circles :hmph: yuk
Either cut them into julienne type sticks or don't have them at all, that's what I say.
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It bugs me when people scrape carrots prior to eating/cooking them. Clean them in some water, fine, but don't scrape them. The stuff that's good for you is in the outer layers of the carrot. (Or that's how the story goes in my family anyway).
 
Yes, bags of nutrients in carrot skins.
But didn't some government department (UK) advise us to give non-organic carrots a good scrape and cut the top and bottom inch off because of high levels of pesticide residues? :(
 
If that's the case, then there's no point buying non-organic ones...
 
Re: I know I'm going to be sorry I asked, but....

Gemaki said:
What difference does the shape of the same food matter? Seriously, I want to know! My husband will eat spaghetti noodles in spaghetti, and elbow macaroni in Mac and cheese. That's it! He says the other shapes of pasta don't taste the same! ARGHHH! One time I didn't have spaghetti noodles, so I used fetticini, he would not eat it. Boy, sometimes I miss him. (KIDDING!)
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As for pasta, that's a different kettle of fish (so to speak). The various shapes are designed to behave in different ways with the sauce, so they wouldn't necessarily taste the same. Your husband does sound like a fussy bugger though ;)
In the case of vegetables, cutting them differently does affect the way they taste in some cases. Try grated carrot versus diced carrot for instance.
The discs/julienne question though, IMO, is simply association with school dinners.
 
Re: Re: I know I'm going to be sorry I asked, but....

beakboo said:
The discs/julienne question though, IMO, is simply association with school dinners.
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Interesting. I like carrots, and I have them a lot, but I never dice them, and don't like them diced. Now that you mention it, diced is how they served them in our school diners. I usually cut my carrots into disks.
 
I like tinned carrots myself. One of the few I know.

My wife loves cucumber but only in circles. If it's in verticle slices she won't touch it. Weirdo!

Personally, I love corn on the cob. If a kernel falls off, however, I won't eat it. It doesn't taste the same. That's common sense though surely?
 
baked beans and fried eggs can only be on the same plate if they are kept apart by something else - bacon or chips or whatever.


It's just the way it is.

Kath
 
is there /any/ food stuff (in the broadest sense) which is rejected the world over?

some cultures eat people with honour and love so even that isn't a universal taboo.

Kath
 
stonedoggy said:
is there /any/ food stuff (in the broadest sense) which is rejected the world over?

some cultures eat people with honour and love so even that isn't a universal taboo.

Kath
Click to expand...

Prawn Cocktail crisps.
 
:cross eye

I don't count that as "foodstuff" ...

excuse me, I ned to leave rapidly!

Kath
 
stonedoggy said:
baked beans and fried eggs can only be on the same plate if they are kept apart by something else - bacon or chips or whatever.
Click to expand...
You allow your bacon or chips to be touched by bean juice? *shudder* :eek!!!!: :cross eye ;)
 
The only thing worse than baked beans is baked beans with sprouts!:(
 
That sound positively unnatural... :eek!!!!:

My first encounter with baked beans was on a school trip to the UK, when I was 16.
Breakfast consisted of beans, some kind of near-meatless sausage and powdered scrambled eggs. Lunch included a packet of crisps, an apple and a cheddar sandwich (I can only eat it melted). Dinner was usually grey spaghetti.
I lost loads of weight. :p

And I haven't been able to bring myself to touch baked beans since. :D
 
We have a grand tradition here of feeding school children utter ming.

My own personal belief is that the "cooks" compete to see how grim they can make the food before the kids rebel.:D

Me? Perpetuating steroetypes? As if...:rolleyes:
 
guttersnipe said:
baked beans are lovely!
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Hmm. I can only get one of mine to eat them in any quantity.

Mostly they prefer food.
 
My ideal fortean dinner would feature lamb of tartary and philosopher's eggs, washed down with a drop of absinthe.
 
stonedoggy said:
is there /any/ food stuff (in the broadest sense) which is rejected the world over?
Click to expand...
Pot Noodle. It's the nose-picking of convenience stuffs - everyone's done it at least once, but no-one admits to it :).

(edited for..erm...content...)
 
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