Cooking With Tap Water: Is Your Water Messing with Your Cooking?

The water used for cooking and making beverages can alter its taste and quality considerably. While tap water is generally safe for consumption, it can carry many impurities that might not be visible to the naked eye. Let’s take a closer look at how tap water can affect your cooking and what you can do about it.

Tap Water

Tap water can have several substances that may influence its taste and odor. Chlorine is one such substance that is added to water for disinfection purposes, while it’s important to kill pathogens it also leaves behind an undesirable flavor and smell which impacts the quality of the cooked dishes. Other contaminants that may be found in tap water include heavy metals such as lead, copper, pesticides and industrial chemicals.

People residing in certain areas may find that they have a hard water supply and their water has minerals such as calcium and magnesium in excess quantity. These minerals can make your vegetables tougher and can lead to scale build-up inside cooking pots and pans, which might affect heat distribution and cooking times.

Impact on Cooking and Baking

Water that contains chlorine and other chemicals when used for cooking, can change the taste of your soups, sauces and even baked items. It can give your tea and coffee an off-putting taste and reduce its overall quality.

Hard water can interfere with the cooking time of dishes, vegetables might remain tough and beans may take a longer time to soften. While baking, the dough’s gluten structure may be affected causing it to not rise properly or having a less optimal texture in bread and pastries.

Excess minerals can also cause food to be discolored like the vibrant green color of spinach or broccoli might be dulled when cooked in hard water.

Solutions for Better Cooking Water

To ensure that your dishes taste good, you could boil your water. This would help remove some of the volatile compounds such as chlorine. However, heavy metals, pesticides and non-volatile chemicals would still be present, thus making this only a partial solution.

For a complete fix, you could get a water filtration system installed. This would be an effective way to remove excess minerals, heavy metals, pathogens, pesticides and other contaminants from your water. This way your cooking water would be as pure as possible.

Benefits of Using Filtered Water

Using filtered water improves the flavors and textures of your food items. Chlorine and other contaminants no longer interfere with the natural taste of your ingredients. This is particularly important for recipes that have water as the main ingredient, such as stews, soups and other beverages.

Your vegetables will cook more evenly and baked goods will also rise properly and will have a more enjoyable texture. With filtered water, your dishes won’t look discolored or dull and will appear more vibrant and fresh.

If you are not sure about your water quality, get water testing in Portage, MI by contacting Gordon Water. Our skilled team will help you understand your water quality and based on your needs they will help you choose a high-quality water filtration system. Visit our website to learn more about our advanced water filtration systems and how they can transform your culinary experience.