Using Rice to Keep Salt Dry-------Theory All Wet?

[ScoopKW]

Has anyone bothered to weigh the rice before and after its stint in a salt shaker?

My hypothesis is that the weight difference would be recorded as "diddly-squat."

[andiesenji]

Has anyone bothered to weigh the rice before and after its stint in a salt shaker?

My hypothesis is that the weight difference would be recorded as "diddly-squat."

Excellent point!

[dcarch]

OK! Look, I just found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_chloride

Sodium chloride,

"-----Sodium chloride is sometimes used as a cheap and safe desiccant because of its hygroscopic properties, making salting an effective method of food preservation historically; the salt draws water out of bacteria through osmotic pressure, keeping it from reproducing, a major source of food spoilage. Even though more effective desiccants are available, few are safe for humans to ingest.---"

As I suspect, when you put rice in salt, actually the salt is keeping the rice dry, not the other way around.

Salt is much stronger in grabing moisture than rice.

dcarch

[AAQuesada]

Has anyone checked McGee OFaC? I don't have my copy on me, curious what he has to say

[Panaderia Canadiense]

dcarch, I think what might be happening here isn't that the rice actually keeps the salt "dry" (which, I agree with you, is pretty spurious given salt's reputation as a dessiccant) but rather that its action in the salt cellar helps to keep the salt loose and as such we perceive the salt to be "dry" simply because it isn't clumpy...

Just my 2 cents. When I lived in the Amazon, the common practice was to keep popcorn kernels in the salt to keep it loose.

[toolprincess]

here's an interesting link

rice is hygroscopic

[dcarch]

here's an interesting link

rice is hygroscopic

Good link.

Here are the issues:

Most material has some hydroscopic properties. Wood, paper, potato chips, --- even plastics. The question is how much.

Salts are well known for their very strong affinity to water, they are very hygroscopic, so much so that they are used frequently as desiccants. Many salts, such as snow melting salts, if you don’t cover the bag, they will soon absorb so much water that they liquefy into a puddle of water that they absorb, which is known as Deliquescence.

If you put salt, a strong hygroscopic substance next to rice, guess which way the water is going to go.

For argument’s sake, let’s say rice is a stronger absorber of water than salt, in a salt shaker, which is open to moisture in air, how can it keep on absorbing water like a perpetual motion machine? There is no known desiccant that can last forever, certainly not an extremely weak one like rice.

dcarch

[andiesenji]

You win! I give up. As far as I am concerned, this topic has been beaten to death.