Cooking at Altitude: The Denver Kitchen Guide to Beans, Pasta, Caramel, Bread and Tea a Mile Up
Clip a thermometer to a pot of water in Cherry Creek and bring it to a full rolling boil. It will read about 202°F, not 212. That missing ten degrees, the result of thinner air a mile above the sea, is the reason half the recipes in your kitchen behave strangely here, and almost none of them tell you so. Every cookbook you own was tested near sea level.
The physics is simple. Lower air pressure means water boils at a lower temperature, liquids evaporate faster, and gases, including the ones that make bread and cake rise, expand more. In practice that means beans cook slowly, pasta cooks slowly, candy thermometers lie, cakes rise too fast and fall, bread proofs in half the time, and, for once, a pot of black tea comes out exactly right. This is the guide for anyone who moved here and cannot understand why the pot of beans is still crunchy at dinnertime.
Beans
Beans are the altitude problem everyone meets first. Dried beans soften when their starches hydrate and their cell walls break down, and both processes slow sharply as the water temperature drops. At 202°F, a pot of beans that takes ninety minutes in Boston can take three hours in Denver, and old beans, which were already slow, may never fully soften.
Three things fix it. Buy fresh beans; a bean harvested this year cooks in a fraction of the time of one that has sat in a warehouse for three, which is the entire argument for the heirloom beans we stock. Soak them, overnight or at least four hours, which matters more here than at sea level. And consider a pressure cooker, which raises the boiling point back above 240°F and turns a three-hour pot into forty minutes; it is the single most useful piece of equipment in a high-altitude kitchen. Salt the water from the start, keep the pot at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil, and add tomatoes, vinegar or other acid only after the beans are tender, since acid slows softening further. Our guide to building flavor in a pot of beans assumes you have the time; up here, plan for it.
Pasta, rice and grains
Pasta cooks by absorbing water and gelatinizing its starch, and cooler water does both more slowly. Add a minute or two to the package time for dried pasta and taste rather than trust the clock; a bronze-die pasta with a thick wall, like a rigatoni or a bucatini, feels the difference more than a thin strand. Use a big pot with plenty of water so the temperature recovers quickly after the pasta goes in, keep the lid off for a true boil, and salt generously.
Rice, farro and other whole grains need more water and more time; add roughly a quarter cup of extra liquid per cup of grain and expect twenty to thirty percent longer. Risotto takes longer to reach creaminess, and the extra evaporation means you will use more stock than the recipe says. Keep a kettle of hot stock beside the pan.
Candy, caramel and syrups
Every candy temperature in every recipe is calibrated to sea-level boiling. The temperature of a sugar syrup is a proxy for how much water is left in it, and because water boils cooler here, the same concentration is reached at a lower reading. The correction is roughly two degrees Fahrenheit for every thousand feet: in Denver, subtract about ten degrees from any candy temperature. A recipe that calls for a firm-ball stage at 245°F is done at 235°F here. Ignore that and your caramels come out hard enough to threaten dental work, and your fudge turns to sugar.
The cleaner method is to calibrate. Boil water, note the reading on your thermometer, and use the difference from 212°F as your correction for every stage. Syrups, jams and reductions also reduce faster at altitude because of the evaporation rate, so watch them closely and pull them early. Maple sugarmakers here would finish syrup near 209°F rather than the 219°F of Vermont, which our maple guide explains in more detail.
Baking
Baking is where altitude does the most damage, because lower pressure lets leavening gases expand more and faster. Cakes rise dramatically, then the structure cannot hold and they collapse into a dense center. Cookies spread. Quick breads dome and crack. Colorado State University's extension service has studied this for decades, and their adjustments are the standard ones: reduce baking powder or soda by about a quarter, reduce sugar by a tablespoon or two per cup, add a tablespoon or two of extra liquid per cup, raise the oven temperature by fifteen to twenty-five degrees so the structure sets before the batter over-expands, and consider an extra egg for structure in cakes. Chocolate and butter are unaffected; a fine chocolate bar melts and tempers exactly as it does in Brooklyn. Flour dries out faster in our air, so store it sealed.
Bread
Yeast dough rises faster at altitude because the carbon dioxide it produces expands more, and because Denver's dry air pulls moisture from the surface. Faster is not better; flavor develops with time. Use a little less yeast, expect first rises in half the usual time, and cover the dough well or it will form a skin. Many bakers here retard the dough in the refrigerator overnight to slow it down and let flavor catch up, which also happens to make better bread anywhere. Sourdough starters are enthusiastic in Denver for the same reason; feed them a little more often.
Tea and coffee
Here is the good news. Most black teas are best brewed just off a boil, in the range of 195°F to 205°F, and a Denver kettle delivers exactly that without waiting. A Marco Polo or any Mariage Frères black blend brewed with our boiling water comes out rounder and less tannic than the same tin in New York. Green and white teas want cooler water still, 160°F to 185°F, so the usual advice, let the kettle sit a few minutes, applies. Our loose-leaf guide has the temperatures by type.
Coffee is the reverse. Brewing water at 202°F extracts slightly less than water at 205°F, so pour-over coffee here can taste thin or sour if you grind and dose the way a Seattle guide tells you. Grind a touch finer and use a slightly higher coffee-to-water ratio; a good pour-over kettle that holds temperature helps. Espresso machines are pressurized and largely immune.
Eggs, stock and everything that simmers
A soft-boiled egg that takes six minutes at sea level takes seven to seven and a half here; a hard-boiled egg, closer to fourteen than twelve. Stock and braises need longer at a simmer, and because evaporation is faster, they need topping up; keep a lid on anything cooking more than an hour. A braise that was meant to cook for two hours will still work in two hours if it is in the oven, because oven temperature is unaffected, but the liquid will reduce further than the recipe intends.
Storage and the dry air
Denver's low humidity is a gift for crackers, spices and dried goods, which stay crisp and keep well, and a curse for anything that wants moisture. Bread stales faster. Crackers and taralli stay perfect in a loosely closed bag. Drinking chocolate and cocoa powder stay dry and free-flowing. Honey crystallizes no faster than anywhere else, but an open jar of jam dries at the surface. Seal what you want moist; leave alone what you want dry.
The short list
- Beans: fresh beans, soak, pressure cooker, salt early, acid late.
- Pasta and grains: more water, more time, taste rather than time it.
- Candy and caramel: subtract ten degrees, or calibrate against boiling water.
- Baking: less leavening, less sugar, more liquid, hotter oven.
- Bread: less yeast, watch the rise, refrigerate the dough overnight.
- Black tea: the kettle is already at the right temperature.
- Coffee: grind finer, dose higher.
- Everything simmered: longer, with a lid.
We are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, a mile above the ocean, and every bean, box of pasta and tin of tea in the shop is sold to kitchens at this altitude. And if you order from theambrosianpantry.com from somewhere at sea level, please enjoy your fast beans and think of us.
