Cooking dried carbohydrates such as pasta and rice generally depends more on temperature than moisture. You could use instant noodles but definitely not an egg or rice noodle.

In fact, Rice cooks above 100C meaning in order to slow or prevent the water from boiling away without cooking the rice you need to add pressure and potentially some salt to increase the boil temp.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Most starches gelatinize between 60°C to 80°C. Including rice, which has starches that gelatinize between 59°C and 72°C.

Not sure where you're getting the idea that rice needs to cook above 100°C, which is just plainly inconsistent with how most cultures have cooked rice for thousands of years.

Most rice noodles are formed from pre-gelatinized starches, too, in order to form the dough necessary for forming into noodle shapes to begin with. So those just need to be hydrated, and perhaps heated for personal taste preferences.

[–] Dasus 5 points 12 hours ago

Dude. You can cook rice noodles in cold water.

I usually put large rice noodles to cold-ish water for about 45-60 min depending on the noodles.

So having a hot shower with rice vermicelli in your nipples will definitely cook them and in a matter of minutes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

That seems wrong to me. Adding salt doesn't increase the boiling temperature much

[–] finitebanjo 2 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

It would take a lot of salt to have a large noticeable difference, but I like to believe it helps.

As a very loose and unreliable rule of thumb for every 5% salt you raise the water's boiling point by about a degree, but anything more than 2500 mg is over your daily recommended value: each cup of water is 236,588 mg so 5% of 2 cups water would be 23,658 mg.

But it's not wrong to say adding salt helps cook rice, just not by a noticeable amount.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

5% salinity is inedibly salty. You will ruin your pasta or rice, flavor wise. The health effects are not relevant because nobody will actually finish eating an entire serving.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

I think it certainly helps with flavour if nothing else, but I don't think the extra degree or so in temperature would make much difference.

Though saying that, I'm now wondering to what extent rice cooking would be affected by high altitudes — I had a friend who lived somewhere high altitude in South America for a while, and she said that the low atmospheric pressure meant cooking certain foods was difficult because the water boiled at a lower temperature (I wish I could remember more specifics)