Why water and hot oil is a recipe for disaster... especially to my mom.
Whenever I pan fry my favorite frozen dumplings, I’ve come to expect two certainties: an oily mess of splatters ringing the stovetop and my mother yelling about this mess.
It’s not my fault that, when tiny ice chunks stuck to the dumplings come in contact with the hot frying oil, the oil in the pan explodes and splatters all over the burner and alerts my mom of my midnight snack. It’s science’s fault, specifically the principles of density and thermodynamics.
Water is more dense than oil. When mixed, the water will settle towards the bottom of the pan while the oil sits on top.
Therefore, when water melted from the tiny ice chunks comes in contact with the hot oil, the water is pushed to the bottom. Hot frying oil’s temperature is much higher than water’s boiling point of 212 degrees Fahrenheit, so according to thermodynamics, thermal energy will transfer from hotter objects to cooler objects. Therefore, the liquid water pushed below the oil will absorb a ton of thermal energy from the oil and transform into steam.
Because heated water molecules have more kinetic energy (they move faster), the steam expands in volume, and pushes the oil out of the pan violently...and onto my mom’s pristine stovetop.
Cue the yelling.
Comments