18

I've just reduced a 4l of stock in my "kitchen" to 0.5l by boiling it over an hour.

I wrote "kitchen" with quotation marks, because that room might have been designated as a kitchen when the apartment was being built, but I'm pretty sure I see a lot of sagging paint on the ceiling that wasn't there before, the windows in all the rooms in the apartment look like it's just been raining inside and all the sachets I keep in the spice cabinet are wet.

Is there something I could buy that would collect the steam from boiling and prevent this from happening again? The obvious answer would be to install a hood and connect it to a vent (which is conveniently located at the exact opposite point to where the stove was installed), but that would easily set me back a few $1000 and what I can afford right now is more in the range of $60.

Summary

Is there something I could buy within $60 range that could handle collecting steam from 3.5l of evaporated water boiled within one hour? Maybe a dehumidifier made specifically for kitchen or a special lid that allows evaporation but collects the water? If it helps, I'm located in Poland and the price range is actually around 280 PLN.

Giacomo1968
  • 129
  • 1
  • 7
Reverent Lapwing
  • 525
  • 4
  • 13

5 Answers5

27

Well, what you’re looking for is called a “still”. It boils liquid and condenses and recovers the vapor. Most commonly (in cooking) a still is used to boil off and collect pure alcohol, but stills I’ve seen are also capable of boiling off water — in fact, in places where stills are legal to own but alcohol distillation is illegal, distilling water is the excuse under which stills are commonly sold. But it really will work for you; you’ll end up with reduced stock and some distilled water.

Sneftel
  • 33,707
  • 3
  • 86
  • 117
10

It's probably a little more than your budget, but I run a dehumidifier in my kitchen in the winter. The utility room is adjacent and that's where I hang my washing up to dry so even without long simmering it gets pretty humid in the kitchen. With the dehumidifier I don't need to use the extracting cooker hood for boiling (just for frying).

It helps with keeping the place warm, because as well as reducing the need for ventilation it recovers heat by condensing water. Mine collects 2-3 litres of water per day.

If your apartment is prone to condensation anyway a dehumidifier will help, leaving internal doors open, but in this case I would shut the kitchen with it in there. I might even put it up on the worktop pulling moist air from the area of the stove when reducing large quantities - it's most effective at reducing the humidity of warm, humid air. Even so a small model wouldn't keep up with the boil-off rate you have, but it would make a big difference and bring the humidity down much quicker afterwards. Slowing the rate at which you're reducing the stock would make its job easier.

Mine has a compressor like a fridge, and makes a bit of noise. There are some with thermoelectric heat pumps but I don't expect them to be as good, and you'll still get fan noise.

I tried something else, hinted at in your question, and compatible with the dehumidifier, but it didn't work: A non-stick steel baking sheet angled as if to deflect the flow of steam into a dehumidifier soon collected quite a layer of condensation. Unfortunately it reached an equilibrium where no more water condensed, with just too little on there to run down into the waiting jug. Touching the back it felt like only about 40°C. Possibly a more thermally conductive sheet (aluminium) with a fan blowing room air on the back to cool it would condense enough to drip, and could be used to augment a dehumidifier.

Chris H
  • 46,065
  • 2
  • 97
  • 164
4

Get a portable induction cooktop. Put it underneath the existing vent and do your high-humidity cooking there.

user3067860
  • 776
  • 5
  • 8
0

Figure out a way to hold an umbrella over the pot, and then either put a cup under the tip of each rib, or put the whole assembly over a large tub or tray

Moe
  • 9
  • 1
-2

Got Polish winter? Use Polish winter!

Freeze distillation removes water from a solution. Ice is pure water and as it freezes the remaining unfrozen liquid is more concentrated - with alcohol, or with delicious stock flavors.

From Wikipedia

Freeze distillation is a misnomer, because it is not distillation but rather a process of enriching a solution by partially freezing it and removing frozen material that is poorer in the dissolved material than is the liquid portion left behind

Leave your stock pot outside. Bring it in periodically and remove ice.

Bonus: you will not cook delicate dill and carrot flavors into oblivion with a 4 hour boil.

I must admit to being a little bummed that this awesome stock scheme stands at -1. There must be other skeptics. Here is some back reading as regards the freeze approach for concentrating liquid foods. Maybe they will explain it better than I did.

Freeze concentration techniques as alternative methods to thermal processing in dairy manufacturing: A review

Willk
  • 6,646
  • 19
  • 27