The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Technique

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil

183 dishes across 101 chapters · 0 marked cooked

On the Path of Study: Semester 4: The Braise, Semester 6: Pastry Fundamentals

From the Lexicon, Poach, Simmer, Boil

Three temperatures pretending to be one method. POACH: 71–82°C, water barely shivering: eggs, fish, chicken breast, anything delicate that violent bubbles would shred. SIMMER: 85–95°C, lazy bubbles: stocks, braises, beans, sauces. BOIL: 100°C rolling: pasta, blanching, potatoes, and almost nothing made of protein. The most common home error is treating these as synonyms; the most common professional discipline is watching the bubbles, not the dial. Salt poaching liquids and courts-bouillons like they are the sauce, because for those minutes they are.

Read it in the Lexicon →

How to tell it is going right

  • The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
  • It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
  • The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
  • Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
  • The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.

Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.

A chosen film The Difference Between Boiling And Simmering | Cooking Techniques | Whole Foods Market WholeFoodsMarket Watch for: The two pots side by side: the lazy bubbles that break singly at the surface versus the rolling boil, which is the distinction this technique lives or dies on.

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