Simmering and boiling
Also called simmering, braising, stewing, poaching
Quick answer
Cooking a spice in water-based liquid, where what is extracted is decided by what dissolves in water rather than in fat.
What it does to spices
The technique that inverts most of the advice in this catalogue, because the great majority of spice aroma compounds are fat-soluble and barely water-soluble. A spice simmered in a lean liquid gives up much less than the same spice bloomed in oil, and a different fraction of it — which is why a curry built on a tarka tastes integrated and the same spices stirred into stock sit on top. The exceptions are worth memorising: saffron extracts almost completely into warm water and poorly into fat, and liquorice and dried citrus peel likewise. Long simmering also splits volatile from non-volatile — an open pot loses its top notes in the first half hour and concentrates everything that does not evaporate, so a four-hour braise grows more clove-forward and more bitter while growing less fresh. Hence whole spices that can be lifted out, and spicing a long cook twice.
What has been measured
Findings from studies and documented practice that concern this technique, each with the conditions it was made under and what it does not show.
Simmering and boiling · Decreases Curcumin
Turmeric boiled for 10 or 20 min, or pressure cooked for 10 min, lost between 27 and 53 per cent of its curcumin, the largest loss coming from pressure cooking. Cooking it together with red gram (pigeon pea) made no difference to the loss.
Conditions: in water · Boiling for 10 or 20 min; pressure cooking for 10 min · Turmeric alone and with red gram; curcumin measured by HPLC after freeze-drying
Curcumin is not indestructible in a wet dish: a simmered or pressure-cooked dal keeps part of its curcumin, not all of it. The study measured the compound, and says nothing about how the colour of the dish looked.
What this does not show: Read in the abstract only. One laboratory, and the abstract does not give the variety of turmeric, the amount of water or the loss for each treatment separately. Curcumin was measured in a solvent extract of the freeze-dried cooked spice.
Measured on the spice
Simmering and boiling · Decreases Piperine
Black pepper boiled for 10 or 20 min, or pressure cooked for 10 min, lost between 16 and 34 per cent of its piperine, with the largest loss in pressure cooking. The loss was somewhat lower when red gram was present.
Conditions: in water · Boiling for 10 or 20 min; pressure cooking for 10 min · Black pepper alone and with red gram or tamarind
What this does not show: Read in the abstract only. The abstract does not say whether the pepper was whole or ground, or what the piperine became. Pungency itself was not tasted.
Measured on the spice
Simmering and boiling · Decreases Capsaicin
Dried red pepper boiled for 10 or 20 min, or pressure cooked for 10 min, lost between 18 and 36 per cent of its capsaicin, the largest loss coming from pressure cooking. Neither red gram nor tamarind, nor the two together, changed the loss.
Conditions: in water · Boiling for 10 or 20 min; pressure cooking for 10 min · Dried red pepper (Capsicum annuum), alone and with red gram or tamarind
Capsaicin is more durable than most aroma compounds but it is not untouched by wet cooking: this study found a measurable part of it gone after minutes of boiling. Most of the heat remained.
What this does not show: Read in the abstract only. The cultivar and the form of the pepper are not stated there, and the fate of the lost capsaicin was not determined. Other studies of fresh peppers report smaller losses on boiling.
Measured on the spice
Simmering and boiling · Decreases Capsaicin
Poblano, Jalapeño, Serrano, Habanero
Across fresh Poblano, Chilaca, Caribe, Jalapeño, Serrano, Habanero and Manzano peppers, boiling at 96 °C under household conditions caused moderate losses of capsaicinoids, between 1.1 and 28.1 per cent. The proportions of capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin and nordihydrocapsaicin to one another were similar in raw and cooked peppers.
Conditions: in water · 96 °C · Household boiling as done in Mexican cooking; eight pepper types
What this does not show: Read in the abstract only, which does not give the boiling time or say whether the missing capsaicinoids were destroyed or had moved into the water. The range across pepper types is wide.
Measured on the spice
Simmering and boiling · Retains Crocin, Tricrocin, Crocin-3, Crocetindial, colour
Saffron boiled in water for 20 min kept most of its colour compounds. Crocin stood at 81 per cent of its uncooked level, tricrocin at 74 per cent and crocin-3 at 93 per cent, and the total of the measured crocetin compounds at 88 per cent. The minor compound crocetindial disappeared.
Conditions: in water · 20 min at the boil · 0.08 g of Spanish saffron in 50 mL of water; HPLC peak areas at 440 nm
Twenty minutes of boiling costs saffron little of its colour. This says nothing about its aroma, which the study did not follow through cooking.
What this does not show: One purchase of Spanish saffron, in plain water with nothing else in the pot, measured as peak areas, not weights. Picrocrocin and safranal were not measured after cooking.
Measured on the spice
Simmering and boiling · Converts Allyl isothiocyanate, Diallyl sulfide, Diallyl disulfide, Diallyl trisulfide, Allyl thiocyanate, N,N'-Diallylthiourea
Mustard seed, Horseradish, Wasabi
Allyl isothiocyanate boiled in water for an hour breaks down. The products that could be extracted from the water included diallyl sulfide, disulfide, trisulfide and tetrasulfide, the same family of compounds found in cooked garlic, together with allyl thiocyanate; the major product left in the water was N,N′-diallylthiourea.
Conditions: in water · 100 °C under reflux · 1 h · Pure allyl isothiocyanate in water
The sharpness of brown mustard, horseradish and wasabi is lost to long wet cooking by chemical breakdown as well as by evaporation, and the breakdown products are sulfur compounds of the kind that smell of garlic.
What this does not show: Read in the abstract only, which gives no yields. The pure compound in water for a full hour under reflux, where vapour is returned to the flask; in an open pan much of it would leave as vapour first.
Measured on the pure compound
Where it is used
The pairings that specifically call for this technique.
- Fingerroot with white fish — The Thai fish curries and nam ya are built on fingerroot, and the reason is specific rather than general: its bitterness cuts the oiliness and the muddiness of freshwater and oily fish in a way ginger, which is sweet, does not. It is julienned into the dish and eaten rather than infused and removed.
- Fingerroot with makrut lime leaf — The two aromatics that define jungle curry, a Thai curry with no coconut milk in it. Kaffir lime leaf supplies a bright citrus lift and fingerroot supplies the bitter, peppery base, and between them they carry a dish that has no fat to round anything out. The pairing is much less prominent in the coconut curries, where galangal takes fingerroot’s place.
- Hoja santa with white fish — The leaf is used as a wrapper for fish across southern Mexico, and the mechanism is worth stating: it is large, pliable and aromatic, so it perfumes the fish by steam while protecting it from direct heat. Its anise-and-mint character suits white fish for the same reason fennel does, and it does a job no ground spice can — flavouring from the outside inwards.
- Epazote with hoja santa — The two green Mexican aromatics that English has no word for, used in the same regional cooking and doing different jobs. Epazote is sharp, medicinal and used by the sprig in beans and quesadillas; hoja santa is broad, anise-and-mint, and used as a wrapper or torn into a sauce. They appear together in mole verde and in the cooking of Oaxaca and Puebla.
- Calabash nutmeg with uziza — The two halves of Nigerian pepper-soup spice, and they divide the work exactly: uziza supplies pungency and a green bitterness, ehuru supplies warm resinous aroma. A soup with the pepper and not the nutmeg is sharp and thin; one with the nutmeg and not the pepper is aromatic and dull.
- Grains of Selim with uziza — Two spices that English has called Guinea pepper, from two families, in the same pot. Grains of selim brings smoke and a musky bitterness from the whole pod; uziza brings piperine pungency. Between them they give a pepper soup the character that chilli alone cannot.
- Calabash nutmeg with white fish — Fish pepper soup is one of the dishes ehuru is most associated with, and the reason is that its warm resinous aroma sits over fish without the sweetness true nutmeg would bring — which is exactly the distinction the two spices’ shared name obscures.
- Uziza with goat — Goat pepper soup is the dish, and uziza’s bitterness is doing structural work against a fatty, strongly flavoured meat that chilli heat alone would not cut. The same reasoning puts it in isi ewu.
- Ají amarillo with chicken — Ají de gallina is the dish that defines the pairing: shredded poached chicken in a sauce of ají amarillo paste, bread, milk and nuts. The chilli supplies colour, body and a fruity warmth simultaneously, which is why the sauce needs no other seasoning to be recognisable.
- Ají amarillo with potato — Papa a la huancaína and causa are both built on this: boiled potato under or around a sauce whose colour and fruit come from ají amarillo. Potato and chilli were domesticated in the same region and the pairing is about as old as either.
- Daun salam with lemongrass — The two whole aromatics that go into an Indonesian pot together and stay there. Lemongrass supplies a citric lift that is identifiable in the finished dish; salam supplies a tea-like background that is not. Indonesian cooking layers whole aromatics deliberately and this is the base pair.
- Avocado leaf with beans — A toasted avocado leaf in a pot of Oaxacan black beans is the standard preparation, and the result does not taste of anise — it tastes rounder. The leaf is doing what a bay leaf does in a European bean pot, by a different compound and in a different family.
- Avocado leaf with epazote — Both go into Mexican bean pots and both are used for roundness rather than for a flavour anyone identifies. Epazote is sharp and medicinal and goes in fresh near the end; avocado leaf is toasted and goes in at the start. They are complementary in timing as well as in character.
- Celery seed with mustard seed — The backbone of the American seafood-boil and pickling seasonings, and of Old Bay in particular. Celery seed is intensely savoury and slightly bitter — far stronger than the vegetable, since the flavour is concentrated into a tiny seed — and mustard supplies pungency that survives brine and boiling water. Both are used whole in a boil and ground in a rub.
- Celery seed with parsley — Both are Apiaceae and both carry the green, slightly bitter note that family shares, so this is reinforcement rather than contrast — parsley extends celery seed rather than complementing it. Useful in stocks and court-bouillons, where the bundle of aromatics is meant to read as one background flavour rather than as several.
- Celery seed with thyme — A savoury pairing that turns up wherever a long-cooked base is being built: the thyme is resinous and slow-releasing and the celery seed adds a vegetal depth that would otherwise require actual celery. It is much of the reason a stock made with a bouquet garni tastes of more than its bones.
- Kudampuli with white fish — The Keralan red fish curry is built on kudampuli: its heat-stable acid is simmered with chilli, shallot, ginger and curry leaves in an earthenware pot, and the curry is kept for a day before eating. The smoke in the rind is part of the dish’s flavour.
- Kudampuli with tuna — Fish ambul thiyal, the sour black-pepper tuna curry of southern Sri Lanka, is cooked with goraka paste until almost dry. The acid and the long reduction preserve the fish, which is why the dish travelled and kept without refrigeration.
- Kudampuli with mackerel — Mackerel curry with kudampuli is an everyday Keralan dish; the sharp acid cuts through the oily fish in the way lemon does elsewhere, and survives the simmering that lemon would not.
- Kudampuli with prawns — Prawns are cooked in the same kudampuli-soured red gravy as fish along the Kerala coast, with a shorter cooking time.
- Curry leaf with kudampuli — The two defining aromatics of the Keralan fish curry: curry leaves fried in coconut oil at the start, kudampuli simmered through it. One brings aroma, the other acid and smoke, and the dish is recognisable from the pair.
- Tirphal with mackerel — Mackerel in a coconut and red chilli gravy with a few crushed tirphal husks is a Konkani and Goan staple; the resinous citrus aroma answers the oily fish the way a squeeze of citrus peel would.
- Besobela with chickpeas — Shiro, the stew of spiced chickpea or broad-bean flour, is one of the dishes besobela is recorded in. A flour stew is bland and takes an aromatic herb well, and besobela gives it sweetness and depth without heat.
- Timiz with lamb — Timiz goes into berbere, which is traditionally used for mutton, and into meat wots directly. Its resinous, moderate pungency suits a long-cooked fatty meat better than the sharper bite of black pepper.
- Cloves with timiz — Recorded together in Ethiopian meat wots, with black pepper, nutmeg and turmeric. The trade describes timiz itself as clove-like, and the two stack rather than compete.
- Prekese with goat — Goat light soup is one of the standard Ghanaian soups, and prekese’s sweet perfume is part of what makes it Ghanaian. A strongly flavoured meat and a strongly perfumed pod balance each other in a long simmer.
- Prekese with chicken — Chicken light soup and palm nut soup with chicken take prekese the same way goat does. Chicken is milder, so one pod goes further.
- Grains of Selim with prekese — The two dark forest pods of West African soup, used together in Nigerian pepper soups. Grains of selim brings smoke and musk, prekese sweetness and fruit, and both are simmered whole and removed.
- Calabash nutmeg with prekese — Both go into the pot for Nigerian pepper soup. Calabash nutmeg is resinous and warm, prekese sweet; the soup wants both kinds of aroma against its chilli.
- Dawadawa with okra — Okra soups across northern Nigeria and northern Ghana are seasoned with dawadawa, which supplies the savoury depth that meat would in a richer soup. The okra carries the body; the dawadawa carries the flavour.
- Dawadawa with spinach — Efo riro, the Yoruba leaf stew, is defined by iru fried in palm oil with onion and pepper before the greens go in. Leaves are lean and grassy, and the fermented bean gives them the savoury backbone.
- Dawadawa with goat — Northern Ghanaian and Hausa soups with meat are seasoned with dawadawa as a matter of course. Goat stands up to its pungency where a milder meat would be overwhelmed.
- Scent leaf with goat — Goat pepper soup is the dish scent leaf finishes: a peppery broth seasoned with a pepper-soup spice mix, with the leaves torn in at the end so that their clove smell sits on top of the heat.
- Scent leaf with white fish — Catfish pepper soup takes scent leaf the same way as the goat version; the clove note cuts the richness of the fish.
- Scent leaf with chicken — Chicken pepper soup and chicken stews are seasoned with scent leaf added near the end.
- Scent leaf with uziza — Two leaves of the south-eastern Nigerian soup pot, one clove-scented and one peppery; both go into pepper soups and nsala, and between them they supply most of the aroma the spice mix does not.
- Ogiri with spinach — Leaf soups — egusi with ugu or other greens, bitterleaf soup — are where ogiri is dissolved to give depth; the fermented savouriness balances the bitter and grassy greens.
- Ogiri with beef — The meat of a Nigerian soup — beef, often with stockfish — is where ogiri’s savouriness goes; a small piece deepens the whole pot.
- Country onion with njangsa — Two Central African forest seeds pounded together into the spice base of Cameroonian soups and sauces: njangsa thickens and gives a nutty body, country onion the garlic smell.
- Country onion with goat — One of the grated forest spices of south-eastern Nigerian pepper soup, giving an allium note beneath the heat.
- Country onion with white fish — Grated into fish soups and fish pepper soup, where the garlic note suits the fish.
- Ishpingo with maize — Colada morada is a drink of black maize flour cooked with fruit and the spice infusion; ishpingo is its characteristic spice.
- Litsea berry with white fish — Guizhou sour fish soup is the dish litsea is best known in: river fish poached in a sour, chilli-red broth, finished with crushed berries or a few drops of litsea oil whose lemon note lifts the fermented sourness.
- Litsea berry with tomato — The red sour soups of Guizhou are built on fermented tomato and chilli, and litsea is the aromatic that finishes them.
- Litsea berry with chicken — In Taiwan maqaw seasons chicken soup and roast chicken; the lemon-and-ginger aroma suits a plain broth that lets it through.
- Round cardamom with beef — Beef shin braised in a master stock is the standard use: round cardamom sits in the spice bundle with star anise and cassia, its cooling note beneath the anise.
- Round cardamom with duck — Braised and soy-braised duck in a spiced stock, where round cardamom and the other bundle spices cut the richness of the fat.
- Round cardamom with pork — Pork belly and trotters braised in a master stock take the same bundle, round cardamom included.
- Makwaen with white fish — Where it grows, local people use the fruit as a spice for boiling fish. The source names no particular fish, and white fish stands in here for fish in general.
- Mekelesha with chicken — Ground mekelesha is added to doro wot, the Ethiopian chicken stew, to give it more flavour.
- Cha phlu with rice — Fresh cha phlu leaves season khao ber, the spicy rice soup of the Karen of northern Thailand.
- Ramsons with soup — The spring leaves flavour soups across the range where ramsons is gathered, from the Balkans to Britain, and are recorded in soups in Slovenia.
- Asam gelugur with lemongrass — The two go into the pot together in the Malaysian fish dishes a food-consumption survey describes: masak singgang is seafood boiled with asam gelugur and lemongrass, and masak lemak adds both to coconut milk with basil and turmeric leaf. The dried fruit supplies the sourness and the lemongrass the scent.
- Ginger with roselle — The handbook account of roselle in Africa records that ginger is sometimes added when the calyces are boiled for the chilled juice sold as bissap in Senegal and da bilenni in Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Burkina Faso, particularly when the juice is to be sold frozen.
- Mint with roselle — Recorded in the same sentence as ginger: mint is sometimes boiled with the calyces for the chilled or frozen juice sold in West African markets.
- Doubanjiang with beef — Water-boiled beef, the Sichuan dish of sliced beef poached in a seasoned broth under fried chilli and Sichuan pepper, starts from vegetables stir-fried with doubanjiang. In a study that cooked the dish with and without the paste, leaving it out made the dish less savoury and less liked.
- Asam gelugur with turmeric — The southern sour curry of Thailand is built on a paste of fresh turmeric, garlic, shallot and chilli, and is then soured, with lime juice, tamarind or the dried fruit. The turmeric gives the curry its yellow and the fruit its acid: in one study a paste made with the dried fruit stood at pH 3.4 against 5.1 without it. In Peninsular Malaysia the same fruit is boiled with fish in coconut milk with turmeric leaf.
- Nam prik pao with prawns — Tom yum with prawns is commonly finished with a spoonful of the paste, which colours the broth and adds sweetness and depth under the lime and chilli. The paste often contains dried shrimp itself.
Questions this page answers
- do spices lose flavour when boiled
- should i add spices at the start or the end of a stew
- why does my curry taste like the spices are sitting on top
- when to add spices to a slow cooker
- why do long-cooked dishes taste more bitter