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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brand with today's question,

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Speaker 1: why do some foods have high altitude cooking instructions? Almost

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Speaker 1: any packaged food that involves boiling, like boxed macaroni and

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Speaker 1: cheese dinners, for example, will have high altitude cooking instructions.

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Speaker 1: I have here in front of me a box of

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Speaker 1: Hamburger helper that says high altitude thirty sixty feet, decrease

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Speaker 1: hot water to three and three quarters cups and increase

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Speaker 1: the simmer time to seventeen minutes. So why would you

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Speaker 1: want to increase the simmer time at altitude? The reason

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Speaker 1: foods have these instructions is because the boiling point of

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Speaker 1: water changes with altitude. As you go higher, the boiling

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Speaker 1: temperature decreases, So at sea level, the boiling point of

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Speaker 1: water is two hundred twelve degrees fahrenheit. As a general rule,

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Speaker 1: the temperature decreases by one degree fahrenheit for every five

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Speaker 1: ft of altitude, So on top of Pike's Peak at

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Speaker 1: fourteen thousand feet, the boiling point of water is only

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Speaker 1: one seven degrees fahrenheit. So pasta or potatoes cooked at

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Speaker 1: sea level are seeing twenty five degrees more heat than

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Speaker 1: pasta or potatoes cooked on Pike's Peak. The lower heat

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Speaker 1: means you need a longer cooking time. Pressure cookers work

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Speaker 1: in the opposite direction. A pressure cooker raises the pressure

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Speaker 1: so that the water boils at a higher temperature. A

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Speaker 1: typical pressure cooker applies fifteen pounds of pressure, so the

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Speaker 1: boiling point of water rises to two hundred fifty degrees

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Speaker 1: fahrenheit at sea level. The higher temperature means that foods

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Speaker 1: take less time to cook inside a pressure cooker. Be

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