How to chill a bottle of wine in under 10 minutes
- by Tanya Ryno (RSS feed) on Jul 14th 2007 9:00AM
- Filed under food, in the kitchen, entertaining
The dilemma: It's Friday night. You're off to a dinner party. So you stop to pick up an obligatory last-minute bottle of wine, and show up on their doorstep with a totally warm bottle of chardonnay. Some guest you are -- what exactly were you thinking?
The solution:
Ask to borrow some salt (and a measuring cup.) Then add a third of a cup of salt to a mixture of ice and water (you'll also have to ask for an ice bucket.) Place your bottle of wine in it and in less than six minutes you'll have saved yourself -- who knows -- this nifty little trick may even make you the life of the party.
Why it works:
Salt has many random uses that most of us don't need to know. In this case, however, it might be useful to know that salt causes ice to melt at a lower temperature compared to ice that is just in fresh water. This results in water that becomes colder much faster. In fact, using salt water versus regular water cuts the chilling time by one third.
Who you'll impress:
Everyone at the party, unless -- of course -- you use all the salt that was needed for dinner.
Comments [5]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-17-2007 @ 10:17PM
Brad Grier said...
You can also do this with beer. Same concept but chill it in about 2 mins.
Reply
7-17-2007 @ 10:20PM
GW said...
Hey, this tip makes total sense. Old-fashioned ice cream makers use salt and ice for this reason. This tip will really help us to quickly chill our coffee cooler mix when we run short and need a new batch ready quickly. I can't wait to tell my peeps at hte coffee shop!
Reply
7-31-2007 @ 8:15AM
Biagio said...
Your description of why this works is wrong. It actually causes the the water to freeze at a lower temperature, not the ice to melt at a lower temperature.
With regular ice water ice is forming and melting at about the same rate. When the ice melts it requires energy to break those bond which it draws from the water. without salt this cases that water to freeze which releases some energy and keeps the temperature constant at 0 F. When salt is added ice ceases to form so energy more energy is drawn out of the water than is added to it.
the ice doesn't change, the water does.
Reply
8-20-2007 @ 12:44PM
eva said...
Ilive in Canada
IFyou have work please send me the information Eva
Reply
8-20-2007 @ 4:33PM
eva said...
if you have work give me deatels
eva
Reply