How Cooking at High Altitudes Works

The boiling point of water decreases as altitude increases -- generally, this temperature decreases by one degree for every 540 feet of altitude. Learn more about cooking at high altitudes in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com
where smart Happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brand with today's question,
why do some foods have high altitude cooking instructions? Almost

(00:20):
any packaged food that involves boiling, like boxed macaroni and
cheese dinners, for example, will have high altitude cooking instructions.
I have here in front of me a box of
Hamburger helper that says high altitude thirty sixty feet, decrease
hot water to three and three quarters cups and increase

(00:41):
the simmer time to seventeen minutes. So why would you
want to increase the simmer time at altitude? The reason
foods have these instructions is because the boiling point of
water changes with altitude. As you go higher, the boiling
temperature decreases, So at sea level, the boiling point of
water is two hundred twelve degrees fahrenheit. As a general rule,

(01:04):
the temperature decreases by one degree fahrenheit for every five
ft of altitude, So on top of Pike's Peak at
fourteen thousand feet, the boiling point of water is only
one seven degrees fahrenheit. So pasta or potatoes cooked at
sea level are seeing twenty five degrees more heat than

(01:25):
pasta or potatoes cooked on Pike's Peak. The lower heat
means you need a longer cooking time. Pressure cookers work
in the opposite direction. A pressure cooker raises the pressure
so that the water boils at a higher temperature. A
typical pressure cooker applies fifteen pounds of pressure, so the
boiling point of water rises to two hundred fifty degrees

(01:47):
fahrenheit at sea level. The higher temperature means that foods
take less time to cook inside a pressure cooker. Be
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