It would take a lot of salt to have a large noticeable difference, but I like to believe it helps.
As a very loose and unreliable rule of thumb for every 5% salt you raise the water’s boiling point by about a degree, but anything more than 2500 mg is over your daily recommended value: each cup of water is 236,588 mg so 5% of 2 cups water would be 23,658 mg.
But it’s not wrong to say adding salt helps cook rice, just not by a noticeable amount.
5% salinity is inedibly salty. You will ruin your pasta or rice, flavor wise. The health effects are not relevant because nobody will actually finish eating an entire serving.
I think it certainly helps with flavour if nothing else, but I don’t think the extra degree or so in temperature would make much difference.
Though saying that, I’m now wondering to what extent rice cooking would be affected by high altitudes — I had a friend who lived somewhere high altitude in South America for a while, and she said that the low atmospheric pressure meant cooking certain foods was difficult because the water boiled at a lower temperature (I wish I could remember more specifics)
It would take a lot of salt to have a large noticeable difference, but I like to believe it helps.
As a very loose and unreliable rule of thumb for every 5% salt you raise the water’s boiling point by about a degree, but anything more than 2500 mg is over your daily recommended value: each cup of water is 236,588 mg so 5% of 2 cups water would be 23,658 mg.
But it’s not wrong to say adding salt helps cook rice, just not by a noticeable amount.
5% salinity is inedibly salty. You will ruin your pasta or rice, flavor wise. The health effects are not relevant because nobody will actually finish eating an entire serving.
I think it certainly helps with flavour if nothing else, but I don’t think the extra degree or so in temperature would make much difference.
Though saying that, I’m now wondering to what extent rice cooking would be affected by high altitudes — I had a friend who lived somewhere high altitude in South America for a while, and she said that the low atmospheric pressure meant cooking certain foods was difficult because the water boiled at a lower temperature (I wish I could remember more specifics)