Gelatinizing Starch in an Emergency

In a disaster without power, your stockpile of dried rice and pasta suddenly raises a question: how do you cook them? According to jefftk on LessWrong, the answer involves understanding starch. Heat and water make starch digestible, but you don't need a rolling boil—one hundred eighty degrees Fahrenheit is enough; even one hundred sixty degrees will partially work. That opens up some practical options. A solar oven, built from tinfoil, cling wrap, and cardboard, can cook pasta on roughly sixty percent of days, even in Boston. If the sun doesn't cooperate, pre-soak your pasta on a propane stove, bring it to a boil, then move it to an insulated container and turn off the heat—one twenty-pound propane tank will cook several hundred pounds. The catch: don't skip the pre-soaking. As starch gels, it becomes less permeable to water, so without stirring the surface may not fully hydrate. Round out your emergency supplies with foods you can eat cold—crackers, cereal, instant ramen—and you've got backup meals for cloudy days.

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