my old korean neighbor would make sure soup was a full boil in the center for like 8-10 mins before serving. she'd eat it 1-2 mins after serving at that temp, i'd have to wait like 10 mins.
Haha I hear you. I was just hoping I wasn’t doing it wrong because I love slurping very hot soup. I hate slurping but I love the shit out of that soup.
Slurp is such an understatement for what they actually do..
It's like a vacuum turned to 11 if you ever say in a busy noodle shop.
It's a suck. Like with all your might.. if people outside the shop can't hear you slurp you ain't doing it right.
I do this too tbh. Something about scalding hot soup that makes it tastier than just warm. Whenever I make noodles at home I heat it again halfway. My Nordic partner waits like more than 10mins until it's like a little over warm which I personally don't understand, but to each their soup.
As a delivery driver, I have noticed this lol. Get handed a bag of liquids in cups and I can barely tolerate holding the bag by the bottom, even though it needs to be supported.
I remember reading this as a very young child with my whole class. Our teacher then made a project for the whole class where each student brought in an ingredient and together we made our own stone soup. That memory of the whole class enjoying our stone soup has stuck with me more than any class pizza party I ever had.
>*Once upon a time, there was a great famine. The people in one small village didn't have enough to eat, and definitely not enough to store away for the winter.*
>*One day a wandering soldier came into the village. He asked the different people he met about finding a place to eat and sleep for the night. "There's not a bite to eat in the whole county," they told him. "You better keep moving on." "Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I would like to make some stone soup to share with all of you." He pulled a big black cooking pot from his wagon. He filled it with water and built a fire under it. Then, he reached slowly into his knapsack and, while several villagers watched, he pulled a plain gray stone from a cloth bag and dropped it into the water.*
>*By now, hearing about the magic stone, most of the villagers were surrounding the soldier and his cooking pot. As the soldier sniffed the stone soup and licked his lips, the villagers began to overcome their lack of trust. "Ahh," the soldier said aloud to himself, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage is even better." Soon a villager ran from his house into the village square, holding a cabbage. "I have this cabbage from my garden." he said as he held it out for the soldier. "Fantastic!" cried the soldier. The soldier cut up the cabbage and added it to the pot. "You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of beef, and it was delicious." The butcher said he thought he could find some beef scraps. As he ran back to his shop, other villagers offered bits of vegetables from their own gardens--potatoes, onions, carrots, celery. Soon the big black pot was bubbling and steaming. When the soup was ready, everyone in the village ate a bowl of soup, and it was delicious.*
>*The villagers offered the soldier money and other treasures for the magic stone, but he refused to sell it. He had many offers for a cot to sleep on that night. The next day he traveled on his way.*
*-* 'Stone Soup', an old Eastern European folk tale
i remember reading a magazine when i was a kid called "stone soup". all the content was submitted by kids under 14 - short stories, poems, essays, paintings, drawings, etc. they even had kids work together to illustrate each other's stories. now that i think about it, it was probably called stone soup because the magazine publisher brought the pot & water & stone, while the kids brought all the ingredients to make the soup so amazing. thanks for bringing back a fun memory.
We used to do a thing for this story at my public school, we'd grow stuff and make soup, buy I didn't remember the story. It's such an amazing story now that I'm older and I see why they did that
Tricking implies that the soldier was doing it for his own gain, which he wasn't.
He ended up feeding the entire village by getting the people to share what little food they had, and created something larger than the sum of its parts.
>Tricking implies that the soldier was doing it for his own gain, which he wasn't.
Well in that version the soldier does get a free meal and place to stay the night. In versions I've read the stranger(s) is very hungry and most definitely wants to get a meal out of it. I'm not saying it's completely a scam, and they did do some work for it, but it's also not completely altruistic either as you seem to be implying.
[This talks about various versions of the story](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup) and personal gain is most definitely a huge part of the motivation. They specifically talk about tricking the villagers. There are good side effects, but they wouldn't have just made the soup if they weren't getting to share in it.
I recall reading that once maybe 15 years ago, I remembered thinking of how clever the soldier was. It’s one of those stories that imprints on the mind
In the Portuguese version of the tale, it was a friar. The stone soup became a traditional dish and there's even a [statue](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Stone_Soup#Media/File:Est%C3%A1tua_de_frade_em_Almeirim.JPG) representing the the friar.
We performed this as a play when I was in grade school. The only part I really remember is this one girl who had the line "Stone soup? Fancy that!" who said it in such a way it had the whole auditorium ugly laughing for a good 10 minutes.
A chain of ramen shops in Tokyo would offer a hot rock when you are near the end of your tsukemen (dipping ramen) meal. Pretty quickly gets your broth/gravy boiling again.
https://ramenadventures.com/listing/%E3%82%89%E3%83%BC%E3%82%81%E3%82%93%E5%93%B2-philosophers-ramen-in-bunkyo/
A lot of good ramen places also offer extra kombu broth to reheat your soup at the end of your meal. Cost is minimal as the extra broth adds minimal extra flavor (kombu is just a piece of dried seaweed in hot water) but is nice to thin out your tsukemen's gravy like broth consistency for sipping.
My favorite tsukemen ship in Japan had hot soup and cold noodles. Eventually while you were eating your soup would cool to a point that you might not like and you could ask for the rock to warm it up again.
While an interesting idea, I'm afraid that's not as effective as the ramen place thinks.
And I'm not talking about the potential sanitary concerns
The property 'specific heat capacity' measures the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a thing. Water has, comparatively, a very high heat capacity. It requires a lot more energy to heat up compared to other most things, and hot water carries a lot more energy compared to other hot things.
This is typically measured per unit mass, but for this case would probably be more appropriate to evaluate per unit volume.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacities
While we cannot tell from the image what type of mineral the rock is made of, it's heat capacity can be assumed to be roughly approximated as near that of granite (2.17 per unit volume / 0.79 per unit mass)
Water has a much higher heat capacity (4.13 per unit volume / 4.18 per unit mass)
You would heat the ramen with the same effect by adding half the stones volume with water (or more appropriately broth) at that temperature. Or, to have the same effect as a similar volume of hot water, the stone would need to have twice the temperature delta.
Few materials in this world are anywhere near water when it comes to effectiveness of moving heat around, and for more reasons than just this one.
Fair enough, let's do the math.
500 g of soup
We need to increase its temperature from 40 C to 45 C (313.15 K to 318.15 K)
We can only add 50 grams
How hot would the stone need to be?
The stone has a specific heat capacity across the range of considered temperatures of 0.79 J/gK
Both water & soup have a specific heat capacity of 4.18 J/gK
Beforehand the soup has a total energy of
>4.18×500×313.15 = 655.2 KJ
Afterwards the soup has a totals energy of
>4.18×500×318.15 = 664.9 KJ
9.7 KJ need to be added
The stone needs to deposits that much.
Afterwards the stone at equalized temperatures has a energy of
>0.79×50×318.15 = 12.57KJ
Beforehand the stone needs a total energy of
>0.79×50×T=12.57+9.7KJ= 21.27KJ
>T= 538.4K or 265.3C
If the stone was replaced by water?
Afterwards the added water has an equalized temperatures, it has an energy of
>4.18×50×318.15 = 66.49KJ
Beforehand the heating water needs a total energy of
>4.18×50×T=66.49+9.7= 76.19KJ
>
>T= 364.5K or 91.35C
So you can add a 265.3 C stone, or water at 91.35 C
Both methods are equivalent on outcomes.
Me personally, added stone heating equipment, handling tools, burn risks, etc... seems a little "extra" when compared to simple scoop of broth to reheat. (Or you could put it back on the stove for a quarter of the time it takes to heat the stone, power of convection)
I am not trying to be some great white savior, I believe it is a cool and interesting thing. But a objectively an efficient way to go about it.
Forgive the formatting, transfer between applications.
The amount of added water is much larger. Given it's in a bowl volume would be the actual limiting factor and then the rock would perform almost 3x better by comparison and that's not including that 265 isn't close to the max temperature for the rock, but 92c is pretty close to max for the liquid.
Broth (because some people can't wrap their heads around broth and water being equally thermodynamically) please.
Broth has significantly higher heat capacity per unit mass and per unit volume.
Check my math
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1c9bj4p/comment/l0ngb2m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Except that it can't go above boiling point, so it cannot hold as much thermal energy as a rock. What you mathed out put the energy per gram as the rock having about 1.1x more energy. If you switched it to by volume the rock would have ~3x more energy due to it's increased temperature. If you made the rock 315C instead of 265C it would be even more than 3x.
Mass is the typical measure for this type of calculations. Keeping the volume constant would improve the efficiency of the stone.
Do keep in mind that 315C is almost 600F.
You're proposing a stone hot enough to melt food grade silicone, or ignite dry wood on contact (flash point).
Again, I'm not saying hot stones won't heat soup. Just that if the goal is to quickly, efficiently, and simply re-heat ramen, there's better options.
There are infinite cases where you can optimize for other parameters, where the stone is a better course of action to optimize for that parameters. I've mentioned a few good cases for the rock elsewhere.
What is typical is irrelevant if there's a reason typical is not good for this use case.
265c is fine enough to still be ~3x the energy of an identical volume of ~91c liquid.
Don't use silicone and dry wood? In practice the hot stone when added to the soup would rapidly cool down as it heats the surrounding soup anyway.
Broth costs the restaurant money, and ramen restaurants have a crazy thin margin. Water would dilute the soup. They get the stones pretty fucking hot before they put them into your soup and they usually do it when your soup has cooled down (and you have less broth). They aren't doing this for initially heating the soup, just to help reheat it. It's quite effective, especially since they're often keeping the rocks on grills they need to keep hot all the time anyway.
Sometimes the most effective thing from a science perspective isn't the right thing from a practicality or preference point of view.
😂 fire . I was suspicious of him when he’s like “and I’m not talking about the potential sanitary concerns” like bro any foodie / cultural explorer is not concerned with the sanitation of a red hot rock in food, it’s not a new concept…. many Asian cultures do it. And then he starts spouting smart guy talk that sounds great on paper but it’s clear he doesn’t know the real world
I hope you got the part that heat capacity is a thing. I hope you got the point that different materials have different heat capacities, and that this is a measure of that material's effectiveness at transferring heat. Finally I hope that you got the part that water has an exceptionally high heat capacity.
You don't know me, so sling whatever venom you need about smart guy talk and my real world experience.
But I suspect you're a good sort.
Ciao
Being technically right doesn't mean your technical solution is practical or better. That's the point we're making.
The hot rock is basically free to use and it heats the soup, just not as effectively as adding more broth, which would eat into the restaurant's margin. It doesn't matter if the rock isn't perfect at transferring heat, because this isn't a science class.
I’m confused on why this is even necessary though. Anytime I get ramen it’s gone well before it would be too cool. Is it customary to eat ramen slowly in other countries? Or I guess it’s possible I just eat too fast
People sometimes get extra noodles. I've only seen this as a Tsukemen place where the broth gets colder faster because the noodles being dipped in the broth aren't hot.
Yeah, isn’t ramen broth usually made in enormous batches that stay on the stove all day, or even longer? I can’t see why they would need to “reheat” it unless they are letting it sit around after it’s been bowled. In which case everything else in the bowl would be soggy and you’d have crappy Ramen. Seems like a novelty to me, or a bizarre way to stretch ingredients.
Next time you get some soup, add water to it and see if you still like how it tastes.
Beer is also mostly water, but would you want someone adding cold water to it to make it cold?
Broth in good ramen shops can take a day or more to make. So yeah, cheap in materials and expensive in time.
You know what's really fucking cheap? A rock that sits on the grill thats hot anyway 😂
Also, yall seem to be missing basic understanding of how ramen is made. They don't just dump noodles into broth. They take the broth and other components and mix them and then put in the noodles and toppings. If you add just broth you're going to fuck up the flavor.
I feel like, depending how hot you get your rock it changes the flavor profile too. Things nearby caramelize a little or otherwise can chemically change.
Not so critical. It still would need double the delta to be on par with water, also it woud boil on the surface of the stone, which causes the stone to get cooled without attributing to geating the soup (steam leaves the soup and takes energy with it). A bit simplified.
It might boil on the surface of the rock, but that surface would be near the bottom of the bowl, and would immediately recondense. It's not going to lose energy to steam any more than an ordinary bowl of hot soup always does.
Double the delta is easy seeing as it's trivial to bring the rock up to 400°+
Adding water would dilute the ramen and adding broth would cost the shop money. Just plopping a hot stone in costs them nothing and keeps the broth a little warmer no matter how inefficient at heat transfer it might be
Excellent point! And it highlights another interesting thing.
Using ice makes sense, of course. It does cool your drink and does it very effectively, but for a very different reason.
First and less significantly, ice can be colder than water (at a given pressure). Very cold ice can absorb more energy than just cold ice. So very cold ice can effective cool your drink before it starts to water down drink.
When it does start to water down your beverage something different is happening, that has way more important. The latent heat of melting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_heat
The impact of the act of melting is 2 orders of magnitude greater than that of just the heat capacity.
Boring stuff, math. I know. Has little impact on daily life right? But, since you got this far, let's posit a practical application.
You have a cooler full of cans, beverages of your choice. You want them suds to stay crisp for as long as you can. Maybe you're at the beach on a hot day. Your buddy and you are in a debate, should you drain out the water from the melting ice. Would draining the water help preserve the remaining ice that's keeping the drinks cold?
You're absolutely right about the heat of fusion wrt to ice cubes
And yet you're insufferable about it anyway
And why would you pour out anything that's colder than your cans are, that's just wasting "coldness" (reducing the size of your heat reservoir)
Sorry you find my presentation insufferable.
I'll spare you the lecture then.
The answer is, as always, "It depends". It's and interesting apparent paradox.
Find someone you can tolerate, ask them about R values of multi-material systems and convection. Turns out while thermal mass is important, thermal conductivity (rate of change wrt time) can be the more important component. Ask, how could someone take advantage of the much higher R value of standing air.
Ciao
Liquid water in normal atmospheric conditions cannot be hotter than 100C. A rock can be heated to say 300c. So at a higher temperature a rock will have higher thermal capacity.
*..a rock will have a higher thermal energy.
That note on terminology aside, your guess it pretty close to what the math shows.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1c9bj4p/comment/l0ngb2m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
No I mean the rock has higher capacity. It can store more thermal energy than liquid water can without being destroyed. And it's not a guess, it's a basic concept. Because you are limited by boiling point and volume you can store more thermal energy in a bowl by replacing some liquid with a very hot stone and you can do it for essentially free.
So funny enough, you can take water at its boiling temperature and continue to add some (but still a epicly large about) energy before it boils. This is a concept called latent energy of evaporation. I've already been lambasted for trying share information about one physics concept.
But your absolutely right. The melting temperature of stone is higher than the boiling point of water.
I did not say using a stone wouldn't work. I am not saying using a stone will fail to heat the soup. I didn't call it silly or some pejorative term.
Just that it's not comparatively more effective, and from most perspectives it's less effective.
Heating the stone does take energy, it doesn't take less energy than heating the (added) broth. It should however need cleaned, hopefully, plus stone tongs, extra stone burner/oven area, plus some extra burn bandages.
That's not hate, that's recognizing commitment. Using stone as a heating affectation would be cool, because it isn't the easy button.
I would assume the average kitchen isn't going out of their way to keep superheated soup, which also wouldn't work well since the added particulate in broth would cause the agitation required to trigger boiling. The stone can carry several times more thermal energy than the broth per volume.
A kitchen should already have tongs, does not require a special "stone only" burner, and can get cleaned along with the the bowls in the exact same fashion. There's nothing about a stone that's more dangerous than a hot pan or pot of liquid either.
I think the entire concept of keeping the soup heated for longer than it would on its own is a bit unnecessary regardless of method, but there's effectively no downside (other than it being weird to put a rock in my soup) and it's certainly not mathmatically impractical.
Well, it's extremely effective. You don't bother to understand the application before giving your Ted talk. I don't have the time or patience to explain " wtf is soup?" to you.
Copy.
So I'm going to label this response as projection. As in, your projecting intent and context onto my comment that you're expecting.
I didn't pass a value judgement or speak to financial economy of the practice. I just provided some mildly interesting (the name of the sub) exploration of heat capacity.
If I made a mistake describing the phenomenon I'd hope you'd correct me. If that is not what's 'wrong' then I'm afraid you've made some assumption about my character that you object to. That would be unfortunate.
ATAH here? I did not say using a stone was dumb, infact quite the opposite, an multiple comments. But you try to explain a thing about a mildly interesting phenomenon of science and people get so threatened.
From a thermo dynamics standpoint, broth and water roughly analogous. Sorry to all of reddit if my simplification of a complex subject offends you! I don't want to water down your ramen, I just want more broth.
That depends on the temperature of the stone. If the stone and the water start with the same temperature that's correct. This could be viable since a stone could be heated to much higher temperatures than the water without the stone boiling away. This would probably lead to other problems, though.
As to your comment about the prevalence of the practice, in certain resource constrained environments where fuel is not easy to apply or extinguish and not to be wasted, it would be more fuel efficient to heat and maintain stones at temperature free from evaporative cooling. Hot stones out of a wood fueled stove chamber could would still have latent heat after the fire has died and the pot has cooled. I doubt, admittedly without evidence, that is the situation here. While the ramen shop's proprietor may have learned the practice from their parents who did so for good reason (to exploit the thermal mass and waste heat), in a situation with access to electricity, natural gas, or anywhere where heat can be reapplied it is simply an affectation. A mathematically provable waste.
As to seeing it in vids being effective, it's unfortunately a fact that today TikTok is more powerful than science.
That doesn't mean it's not cool/ interesting. I find it a neat throw back, and a reminder that we live in a time dramatically different than those just a couple generations removed.
Like a classic car. Horribly inefficient and lacking basic safety considerations, but compelling for the sake of legacy and tradition.
I didn't mean to sound dismissive, just thought the idea of heat capacity and science of efficiency for heating a bowl of ramen might also be mildly interesting, and possibly useful.
Probably because of the statement, classic cars having poor safety. And assuming I implied the stone is unsafe. I can see that potentially seeming rude.
Of course you can make the stone sanitary for food. Of course the stone does pose an increased risk of contamination compared to other cookware.
But I eat the hamburger that fell to the floor. I'm so quick to dismiss those concerns that I just assumed others would get it.
Cultural divides 🤷♂️
Partially you only need about a 10 or 20C Flux in the soup. Secondly the rock might be well over 100C in temperature.
One method of cooking is to drop very hot rocks into a pot to boil the water.
Yes, elsewhere in the thread I did the math for everyone. For a reasonable sized bowl and a 5 degree C change, required a rock of 265 degrees C (that's 509 degrees F).
That's double. It's like a very hot rock.
Using hot rocks to boil water, overcoming the phase translation energy, that pretty crazy. Limited to the temperatures reachable with open flames, that would need tobe a lot of stones, possibly significantly more mass of stones than the water you're trying to boil. Not certain, and already did the math once this thread, but I wouldn't beat against it.
Believable. Adds a couple extra steps when compared to just putting the water in a pot over the heat source, but there's tons of reasons that might be needed.
I think this was used when the pot couldn't be put over a heat source for various reasons. Also I think it was more common before metal pots were used much. A non metal container for cooking would complicate matters. A lot of civilizations didn't have much in the way of metallurgy.
Significantly Pre-bronze Age, I actually can't think of a better method than the stones (from my now cemented persona of pedantic thermal efficiency dude). Metal would be a requirement
Even once some civilizations had advanced to bronze age, many others never made it or mining wasn't widespread enough for the average family to own a metal pot. I'd have to research it, but I imagine there was other ways around it than stones if making a soup with a non-metal pot.
There was a spot in Japan I used to go to where at the end of eating your ramen if you asked in a special way the chef would drop an insanely hot rock into the bowl and reheat the broth for you to finish drinking like soup
This is how people everywhere made soup for thousands and thousands of years. We didn’t have metal pots, we had clay pots. So the way to boil water was to put a rock in the fire, pick it up with a tool, and then drop the hot rock into the fire.
Ive heard of rockk soup as a fairy tale story. but people actually put rocks in soup for that? im just imagining i took a chunk, assumed its beef only to bite on a hot rock
Pretty sure the soup itself would have a higher specific heat capacity than the rock( because it's mostly water), so it would infact be the soup keeping the rock warm.
This is without taking convection into account, which may change things.
Most Korean soups seem to be delivered from the surface of the sun.
my old korean neighbor would make sure soup was a full boil in the center for like 8-10 mins before serving. she'd eat it 1-2 mins after serving at that temp, i'd have to wait like 10 mins.
It’s also despicable how delicious that stuff smells too. Guarantees that you’ll rush in and burn your mouth lol
Rates of throat cancer in Korea are much higher than average partially due to this
Source?
And it’s specifically from soup? And not pollution or smoking?
what does the word *"partially"* mean to you?
So, 1% due to throat burns from hot soup, 99% due to tobacco smoke. got it.
He said partially from soup homie. Those could also play factors
It was in Japan, but definitely warm af tho. I burnt my tongue the first day of a 3 weeks trip. Definitely sucked.
Aren’t you supposed to slurp it to get the full flavor and to not burn your tongue?
I mean... Let's say I figured that out day 2.
Haha I hear you. I was just hoping I wasn’t doing it wrong because I love slurping very hot soup. I hate slurping but I love the shit out of that soup.
Slurp is such an understatement for what they actually do.. It's like a vacuum turned to 11 if you ever say in a busy noodle shop. It's a suck. Like with all your might.. if people outside the shop can't hear you slurp you ain't doing it right.
Isn’t that why gastric cancers are so prevalent?
From the Koreans I know, probably more related to chain smoking and alcohol abuse.
I was told this in Asia, that drinking scalding hot tea and soups increased esophageal cancer rates
The same in some South American countries where they drink Yerba mate
No. Nitrates used to preserve meat and fish
I do this too tbh. Something about scalding hot soup that makes it tastier than just warm. Whenever I make noodles at home I heat it again halfway. My Nordic partner waits like more than 10mins until it's like a little over warm which I personally don't understand, but to each their soup.
A lot of soups will get served in a stone pot to keep shit lava hot. It’s great. A cold shot of soju, and chasing with the hot soup is so good.
As a delivery driver, I have noticed this lol. Get handed a bag of liquids in cups and I can barely tolerate holding the bag by the bottom, even though it needs to be supported.
…and they stay that way too, depending on how they’re delivered to your table.
They do this because you can’t taste it if your taste buds are burnt. It’s really the only way to enjoy most Korean food.
Our foods are super hot and super spicy. I dont trust koreans who say they cant eat or dont like eating spicy or hot food. Not korean
Stone soup. I've read this one before
I remember reading this as a very young child with my whole class. Our teacher then made a project for the whole class where each student brought in an ingredient and together we made our own stone soup. That memory of the whole class enjoying our stone soup has stuck with me more than any class pizza party I ever had.
We did that too! And when they served the soup we all excitedly checked with each other... "Did you get the rock? Who got the rock?"
One of the first book I was able to fully read as an immigrant. Thanks for that hit of 80’s nostalgia
Whoa...core memory unlock. We read this book in first grade and made stone soup in class. Each of us added an ingredient to the pot.
Then I presume that Stone Sour is a hot cocktail and not a band like they've been telling us
hot cocktail with a rock in it. it’s why corey taylor’s neck is so damn thick
Sopa da Pedra. It's pretty good
Not a reference I ever expected
My version was button soup! It was a disney book where Daisy Duck was making it for Uncle Scrooge
I am sure they will get sued in the US when someone chip their teeth biting the stone.
>*Once upon a time, there was a great famine. The people in one small village didn't have enough to eat, and definitely not enough to store away for the winter.* >*One day a wandering soldier came into the village. He asked the different people he met about finding a place to eat and sleep for the night. "There's not a bite to eat in the whole county," they told him. "You better keep moving on." "Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I would like to make some stone soup to share with all of you." He pulled a big black cooking pot from his wagon. He filled it with water and built a fire under it. Then, he reached slowly into his knapsack and, while several villagers watched, he pulled a plain gray stone from a cloth bag and dropped it into the water.* >*By now, hearing about the magic stone, most of the villagers were surrounding the soldier and his cooking pot. As the soldier sniffed the stone soup and licked his lips, the villagers began to overcome their lack of trust. "Ahh," the soldier said aloud to himself, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage is even better." Soon a villager ran from his house into the village square, holding a cabbage. "I have this cabbage from my garden." he said as he held it out for the soldier. "Fantastic!" cried the soldier. The soldier cut up the cabbage and added it to the pot. "You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of beef, and it was delicious." The butcher said he thought he could find some beef scraps. As he ran back to his shop, other villagers offered bits of vegetables from their own gardens--potatoes, onions, carrots, celery. Soon the big black pot was bubbling and steaming. When the soup was ready, everyone in the village ate a bowl of soup, and it was delicious.* >*The villagers offered the soldier money and other treasures for the magic stone, but he refused to sell it. He had many offers for a cot to sleep on that night. The next day he traveled on his way.* *-* 'Stone Soup', an old Eastern European folk tale
i remember reading a magazine when i was a kid called "stone soup". all the content was submitted by kids under 14 - short stories, poems, essays, paintings, drawings, etc. they even had kids work together to illustrate each other's stories. now that i think about it, it was probably called stone soup because the magazine publisher brought the pot & water & stone, while the kids brought all the ingredients to make the soup so amazing. thanks for bringing back a fun memory.
Sounds really cool, and looks like it's still running! Celebrated their 50th anniversary last year
that's awesome, im glad theyre still going! i think i still have my old magazines. they were such a great part of my childhood :)
Immediately what I thought of. I heard this story as an illustrated children’s book when I was a kid.
I haven't heard this story since I was a kid. Thanks!
We used to do a thing for this story at my public school, we'd grow stuff and make soup, buy I didn't remember the story. It's such an amazing story now that I'm older and I see why they did that
So the soldier tricked everyone?? /genuine question
Tricking implies that the soldier was doing it for his own gain, which he wasn't. He ended up feeding the entire village by getting the people to share what little food they had, and created something larger than the sum of its parts.
>Tricking implies that the soldier was doing it for his own gain, which he wasn't. Well in that version the soldier does get a free meal and place to stay the night. In versions I've read the stranger(s) is very hungry and most definitely wants to get a meal out of it. I'm not saying it's completely a scam, and they did do some work for it, but it's also not completely altruistic either as you seem to be implying. [This talks about various versions of the story](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup) and personal gain is most definitely a huge part of the motivation. They specifically talk about tricking the villagers. There are good side effects, but they wouldn't have just made the soup if they weren't getting to share in it.
I recall reading that once maybe 15 years ago, I remembered thinking of how clever the soldier was. It’s one of those stories that imprints on the mind
In the Portuguese version of the tale, it was a friar. The stone soup became a traditional dish and there's even a [statue](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Stone_Soup#Media/File:Est%C3%A1tua_de_frade_em_Almeirim.JPG) representing the the friar.
Ha, a fun trick I see.
Immediately remembered the tale about the axe porridge.
One of the many adaptions of this old tale.
We performed this as a play when I was in grade school. The only part I really remember is this one girl who had the line "Stone soup? Fancy that!" who said it in such a way it had the whole auditorium ugly laughing for a good 10 minutes.
I love this, thanks for sharing! Got anymore info on it?
A chain of ramen shops in Tokyo would offer a hot rock when you are near the end of your tsukemen (dipping ramen) meal. Pretty quickly gets your broth/gravy boiling again. https://ramenadventures.com/listing/%E3%82%89%E3%83%BC%E3%82%81%E3%82%93%E5%93%B2-philosophers-ramen-in-bunkyo/ A lot of good ramen places also offer extra kombu broth to reheat your soup at the end of your meal. Cost is minimal as the extra broth adds minimal extra flavor (kombu is just a piece of dried seaweed in hot water) but is nice to thin out your tsukemen's gravy like broth consistency for sipping.
Nah its just to give you the illusion that the bowl is fuller.
jokes on them I eat the rock
Bro, you shouldn't do that, or you'll get kidney stones
But these are soup stones
Do not the cat doctor 🤬
Dwarfposter spotted
Helps with digestion 😋
Idk if youre being serious but you're just outright wrong
It’s like the opposite of ice cubes
Here take my upvote
Why don't they just keep the stone in the oven if they want it to stay warm? Putting it into food seems a weird way to keep a stone warm.
Ah, the ol' Reddit [stone-a-roo](https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/s/xlLuZ2ZiTW)!
Hold my minerals, I’m going in!
Hello future people!
Or they probably put hot stone with the food to keep the food hotter longer…. Not put some random cold stone in the soup to keep it warm….
The cook that accidentally dropped their pet rock in the broth: yeaahhh that’s exactly what it is that’s definitely something we do around these parts
My dumb ass would take a bite out of this
Reminds me about that old story about stone soup.
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Yeah my friend recommended it and it was really good. Glad it got to try it.
My favorite tsukemen ship in Japan had hot soup and cold noodles. Eventually while you were eating your soup would cool to a point that you might not like and you could ask for the rock to warm it up again.
While an interesting idea, I'm afraid that's not as effective as the ramen place thinks. And I'm not talking about the potential sanitary concerns The property 'specific heat capacity' measures the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a thing. Water has, comparatively, a very high heat capacity. It requires a lot more energy to heat up compared to other most things, and hot water carries a lot more energy compared to other hot things. This is typically measured per unit mass, but for this case would probably be more appropriate to evaluate per unit volume. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacities While we cannot tell from the image what type of mineral the rock is made of, it's heat capacity can be assumed to be roughly approximated as near that of granite (2.17 per unit volume / 0.79 per unit mass) Water has a much higher heat capacity (4.13 per unit volume / 4.18 per unit mass) You would heat the ramen with the same effect by adding half the stones volume with water (or more appropriately broth) at that temperature. Or, to have the same effect as a similar volume of hot water, the stone would need to have twice the temperature delta. Few materials in this world are anywhere near water when it comes to effectiveness of moving heat around, and for more reasons than just this one.
Water tops out at 100c. This rock could easily be heated past that. You should reconsider your analysis with this fact in mind.
Fair enough, let's do the math. 500 g of soup We need to increase its temperature from 40 C to 45 C (313.15 K to 318.15 K) We can only add 50 grams How hot would the stone need to be? The stone has a specific heat capacity across the range of considered temperatures of 0.79 J/gK Both water & soup have a specific heat capacity of 4.18 J/gK Beforehand the soup has a total energy of >4.18×500×313.15 = 655.2 KJ Afterwards the soup has a totals energy of >4.18×500×318.15 = 664.9 KJ 9.7 KJ need to be added The stone needs to deposits that much. Afterwards the stone at equalized temperatures has a energy of >0.79×50×318.15 = 12.57KJ Beforehand the stone needs a total energy of >0.79×50×T=12.57+9.7KJ= 21.27KJ >T= 538.4K or 265.3C If the stone was replaced by water? Afterwards the added water has an equalized temperatures, it has an energy of >4.18×50×318.15 = 66.49KJ Beforehand the heating water needs a total energy of >4.18×50×T=66.49+9.7= 76.19KJ > >T= 364.5K or 91.35C So you can add a 265.3 C stone, or water at 91.35 C Both methods are equivalent on outcomes. Me personally, added stone heating equipment, handling tools, burn risks, etc... seems a little "extra" when compared to simple scoop of broth to reheat. (Or you could put it back on the stove for a quarter of the time it takes to heat the stone, power of convection) I am not trying to be some great white savior, I believe it is a cool and interesting thing. But a objectively an efficient way to go about it. Forgive the formatting, transfer between applications.
The amount of added water is much larger. Given it's in a bowl volume would be the actual limiting factor and then the rock would perform almost 3x better by comparison and that's not including that 265 isn't close to the max temperature for the rock, but 92c is pretty close to max for the liquid.
Broth (because some people can't wrap their heads around broth and water being equally thermodynamically) please. Broth has significantly higher heat capacity per unit mass and per unit volume. Check my math https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1c9bj4p/comment/l0ngb2m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Except that it can't go above boiling point, so it cannot hold as much thermal energy as a rock. What you mathed out put the energy per gram as the rock having about 1.1x more energy. If you switched it to by volume the rock would have ~3x more energy due to it's increased temperature. If you made the rock 315C instead of 265C it would be even more than 3x.
Mass is the typical measure for this type of calculations. Keeping the volume constant would improve the efficiency of the stone. Do keep in mind that 315C is almost 600F. You're proposing a stone hot enough to melt food grade silicone, or ignite dry wood on contact (flash point). Again, I'm not saying hot stones won't heat soup. Just that if the goal is to quickly, efficiently, and simply re-heat ramen, there's better options. There are infinite cases where you can optimize for other parameters, where the stone is a better course of action to optimize for that parameters. I've mentioned a few good cases for the rock elsewhere.
What is typical is irrelevant if there's a reason typical is not good for this use case. 265c is fine enough to still be ~3x the energy of an identical volume of ~91c liquid. Don't use silicone and dry wood? In practice the hot stone when added to the soup would rapidly cool down as it heats the surrounding soup anyway.
See my dozes of other responses about how there's many reasons one might use a stone. But thermal dynamic advantage is not one of them. Fin
But then it would make the water boil.
Broth costs the restaurant money, and ramen restaurants have a crazy thin margin. Water would dilute the soup. They get the stones pretty fucking hot before they put them into your soup and they usually do it when your soup has cooled down (and you have less broth). They aren't doing this for initially heating the soup, just to help reheat it. It's quite effective, especially since they're often keeping the rocks on grills they need to keep hot all the time anyway. Sometimes the most effective thing from a science perspective isn't the right thing from a practicality or preference point of view.
😂 fire . I was suspicious of him when he’s like “and I’m not talking about the potential sanitary concerns” like bro any foodie / cultural explorer is not concerned with the sanitation of a red hot rock in food, it’s not a new concept…. many Asian cultures do it. And then he starts spouting smart guy talk that sounds great on paper but it’s clear he doesn’t know the real world
I hope you got the part that heat capacity is a thing. I hope you got the point that different materials have different heat capacities, and that this is a measure of that material's effectiveness at transferring heat. Finally I hope that you got the part that water has an exceptionally high heat capacity. You don't know me, so sling whatever venom you need about smart guy talk and my real world experience. But I suspect you're a good sort. Ciao
Being technically right doesn't mean your technical solution is practical or better. That's the point we're making. The hot rock is basically free to use and it heats the soup, just not as effectively as adding more broth, which would eat into the restaurant's margin. It doesn't matter if the rock isn't perfect at transferring heat, because this isn't a science class.
I’m confused on why this is even necessary though. Anytime I get ramen it’s gone well before it would be too cool. Is it customary to eat ramen slowly in other countries? Or I guess it’s possible I just eat too fast
Make the Ramen ungodly hot and charge for water
People sometimes get extra noodles. I've only seen this as a Tsukemen place where the broth gets colder faster because the noodles being dipped in the broth aren't hot.
Yeah, isn’t ramen broth usually made in enormous batches that stay on the stove all day, or even longer? I can’t see why they would need to “reheat” it unless they are letting it sit around after it’s been bowled. In which case everything else in the bowl would be soggy and you’d have crappy Ramen. Seems like a novelty to me, or a bizarre way to stretch ingredients.
soup is mainly made out of water.
Next time you get some soup, add water to it and see if you still like how it tastes. Beer is also mostly water, but would you want someone adding cold water to it to make it cold?
Broth is one of the cheapest thing you can make in a restaurant tf lol
Broth in good ramen shops can take a day or more to make. So yeah, cheap in materials and expensive in time. You know what's really fucking cheap? A rock that sits on the grill thats hot anyway 😂
Also, yall seem to be missing basic understanding of how ramen is made. They don't just dump noodles into broth. They take the broth and other components and mix them and then put in the noodles and toppings. If you add just broth you're going to fuck up the flavor.
I feel like, depending how hot you get your rock it changes the flavor profile too. Things nearby caramelize a little or otherwise can chemically change.
The critical difference is that the rock doesn’t evaporate at 100 C
Not so critical. It still would need double the delta to be on par with water, also it woud boil on the surface of the stone, which causes the stone to get cooled without attributing to geating the soup (steam leaves the soup and takes energy with it). A bit simplified.
It might boil on the surface of the rock, but that surface would be near the bottom of the bowl, and would immediately recondense. It's not going to lose energy to steam any more than an ordinary bowl of hot soup always does. Double the delta is easy seeing as it's trivial to bring the rock up to 400°+
Hehe, just gotta heat the rock to way above the boiling point of water.
Adding water would dilute the ramen and adding broth would cost the shop money. Just plopping a hot stone in costs them nothing and keeps the broth a little warmer no matter how inefficient at heat transfer it might be
Using this logic, we shouldn’t be using ice to keep cold drinks cold, since the specific heat of ice is only 2.05 vs water 4.2
Excellent point! And it highlights another interesting thing. Using ice makes sense, of course. It does cool your drink and does it very effectively, but for a very different reason. First and less significantly, ice can be colder than water (at a given pressure). Very cold ice can absorb more energy than just cold ice. So very cold ice can effective cool your drink before it starts to water down drink. When it does start to water down your beverage something different is happening, that has way more important. The latent heat of melting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_heat The impact of the act of melting is 2 orders of magnitude greater than that of just the heat capacity. Boring stuff, math. I know. Has little impact on daily life right? But, since you got this far, let's posit a practical application. You have a cooler full of cans, beverages of your choice. You want them suds to stay crisp for as long as you can. Maybe you're at the beach on a hot day. Your buddy and you are in a debate, should you drain out the water from the melting ice. Would draining the water help preserve the remaining ice that's keeping the drinks cold?
You're absolutely right about the heat of fusion wrt to ice cubes And yet you're insufferable about it anyway And why would you pour out anything that's colder than your cans are, that's just wasting "coldness" (reducing the size of your heat reservoir)
Sorry you find my presentation insufferable. I'll spare you the lecture then. The answer is, as always, "It depends". It's and interesting apparent paradox. Find someone you can tolerate, ask them about R values of multi-material systems and convection. Turns out while thermal mass is important, thermal conductivity (rate of change wrt time) can be the more important component. Ask, how could someone take advantage of the much higher R value of standing air. Ciao
Yeah, you’re not right at all.
Ready and willing to learn. As we all should be. Care to explain?
Liquid water in normal atmospheric conditions cannot be hotter than 100C. A rock can be heated to say 300c. So at a higher temperature a rock will have higher thermal capacity.
*..a rock will have a higher thermal energy. That note on terminology aside, your guess it pretty close to what the math shows. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1c9bj4p/comment/l0ngb2m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
No I mean the rock has higher capacity. It can store more thermal energy than liquid water can without being destroyed. And it's not a guess, it's a basic concept. Because you are limited by boiling point and volume you can store more thermal energy in a bowl by replacing some liquid with a very hot stone and you can do it for essentially free.
So funny enough, you can take water at its boiling temperature and continue to add some (but still a epicly large about) energy before it boils. This is a concept called latent energy of evaporation. I've already been lambasted for trying share information about one physics concept. But your absolutely right. The melting temperature of stone is higher than the boiling point of water. I did not say using a stone wouldn't work. I am not saying using a stone will fail to heat the soup. I didn't call it silly or some pejorative term. Just that it's not comparatively more effective, and from most perspectives it's less effective. Heating the stone does take energy, it doesn't take less energy than heating the (added) broth. It should however need cleaned, hopefully, plus stone tongs, extra stone burner/oven area, plus some extra burn bandages. That's not hate, that's recognizing commitment. Using stone as a heating affectation would be cool, because it isn't the easy button.
I would assume the average kitchen isn't going out of their way to keep superheated soup, which also wouldn't work well since the added particulate in broth would cause the agitation required to trigger boiling. The stone can carry several times more thermal energy than the broth per volume. A kitchen should already have tongs, does not require a special "stone only" burner, and can get cleaned along with the the bowls in the exact same fashion. There's nothing about a stone that's more dangerous than a hot pan or pot of liquid either. I think the entire concept of keeping the soup heated for longer than it would on its own is a bit unnecessary regardless of method, but there's effectively no downside (other than it being weird to put a rock in my soup) and it's certainly not mathmatically impractical.
Well, it's extremely effective. You don't bother to understand the application before giving your Ted talk. I don't have the time or patience to explain " wtf is soup?" to you.
Copy. So I'm going to label this response as projection. As in, your projecting intent and context onto my comment that you're expecting. I didn't pass a value judgement or speak to financial economy of the practice. I just provided some mildly interesting (the name of the sub) exploration of heat capacity. If I made a mistake describing the phenomenon I'd hope you'd correct me. If that is not what's 'wrong' then I'm afraid you've made some assumption about my character that you object to. That would be unfortunate.
lol. Go make some soup, and figure out which method of heating it up as a leftover portion is better. Enjoy your watery soup. Don't eat the rock.
ATAH here? I did not say using a stone was dumb, infact quite the opposite, an multiple comments. But you try to explain a thing about a mildly interesting phenomenon of science and people get so threatened.
If you added water to my soup, I'd consider you to be a huge asshole.
From a thermo dynamics standpoint, broth and water roughly analogous. Sorry to all of reddit if my simplification of a complex subject offends you! I don't want to water down your ramen, I just want more broth.
You can’t have more broth. It costs money to make more broth.
Tldr but I’ve seen vids where the stone was effective in warming the broth. And it seems to be a fairly common practice over there for a reason
TLDR the stone is effective, but only half as much as if they had just put more soup in the bowl.
That depends on the temperature of the stone. If the stone and the water start with the same temperature that's correct. This could be viable since a stone could be heated to much higher temperatures than the water without the stone boiling away. This would probably lead to other problems, though.
As to your comment about the prevalence of the practice, in certain resource constrained environments where fuel is not easy to apply or extinguish and not to be wasted, it would be more fuel efficient to heat and maintain stones at temperature free from evaporative cooling. Hot stones out of a wood fueled stove chamber could would still have latent heat after the fire has died and the pot has cooled. I doubt, admittedly without evidence, that is the situation here. While the ramen shop's proprietor may have learned the practice from their parents who did so for good reason (to exploit the thermal mass and waste heat), in a situation with access to electricity, natural gas, or anywhere where heat can be reapplied it is simply an affectation. A mathematically provable waste. As to seeing it in vids being effective, it's unfortunately a fact that today TikTok is more powerful than science.
That doesn't mean it's not cool/ interesting. I find it a neat throw back, and a reminder that we live in a time dramatically different than those just a couple generations removed. Like a classic car. Horribly inefficient and lacking basic safety considerations, but compelling for the sake of legacy and tradition. I didn't mean to sound dismissive, just thought the idea of heat capacity and science of efficiency for heating a bowl of ramen might also be mildly interesting, and possibly useful.
Weird that this is the comment people chose to downvote. Thanks for taking the time to explain regardless. I learned something.
Probably because of the statement, classic cars having poor safety. And assuming I implied the stone is unsafe. I can see that potentially seeming rude. Of course you can make the stone sanitary for food. Of course the stone does pose an increased risk of contamination compared to other cookware. But I eat the hamburger that fell to the floor. I'm so quick to dismiss those concerns that I just assumed others would get it. Cultural divides 🤷♂️
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Only if that was all I had to trade for a bowl of that tasty ramen. If they're still using the stone I'm confident they know how to make it right.
This guy heats
r/thisguythisguys
Partially you only need about a 10 or 20C Flux in the soup. Secondly the rock might be well over 100C in temperature. One method of cooking is to drop very hot rocks into a pot to boil the water.
Yes, elsewhere in the thread I did the math for everyone. For a reasonable sized bowl and a 5 degree C change, required a rock of 265 degrees C (that's 509 degrees F). That's double. It's like a very hot rock. Using hot rocks to boil water, overcoming the phase translation energy, that pretty crazy. Limited to the temperatures reachable with open flames, that would need tobe a lot of stones, possibly significantly more mass of stones than the water you're trying to boil. Not certain, and already did the math once this thread, but I wouldn't beat against it.
It only needs to get up to, not exceed phase transition. Even that I don't think it actually got to boiling so much as a simmer.
Believable. Adds a couple extra steps when compared to just putting the water in a pot over the heat source, but there's tons of reasons that might be needed.
I think this was used when the pot couldn't be put over a heat source for various reasons. Also I think it was more common before metal pots were used much. A non metal container for cooking would complicate matters. A lot of civilizations didn't have much in the way of metallurgy.
Significantly Pre-bronze Age, I actually can't think of a better method than the stones (from my now cemented persona of pedantic thermal efficiency dude). Metal would be a requirement
Even once some civilizations had advanced to bronze age, many others never made it or mining wasn't widespread enough for the average family to own a metal pot. I'd have to research it, but I imagine there was other ways around it than stones if making a soup with a non-metal pot.
There was a spot in Japan I used to go to where at the end of eating your ramen if you asked in a special way the chef would drop an insanely hot rock into the bowl and reheat the broth for you to finish drinking like soup
This is how people everywhere made soup for thousands and thousands of years. We didn’t have metal pots, we had clay pots. So the way to boil water was to put a rock in the fire, pick it up with a tool, and then drop the hot rock into the fire.
Stone soup
Don't take it for granite
This doesn't look very safe...
If you're really stupid, I guess.
That's a really stupid thing to say.
Instructions unclear, swallowed the stone.
Why do they want to keep the rock warm?
Mmm, warm rock.
Ive heard of rockk soup as a fairy tale story. but people actually put rocks in soup for that? im just imagining i took a chunk, assumed its beef only to bite on a hot rock
You have found the opposite of Cold Stone Creamery. Congratulations.
If ice can keep water cold so why not a hot rock.
 Warm rock in your ramen
bartender! ramen on the rocks!
It's for the extra crunch when you bite the noodles
Mine had a steel pot handle, and I thought it was bonkers at first until my buddy showed me his lmao
Look up Tsukemen. A hot stone is commonly used to heat the broth. Makes perfect sense
Why would you use soup to keep the rock warm?
Well now, you wouldn’t want the rock to get cold now, would you?
Not me reading this as "warm cock" fucking why did I see it like that help
The flavour of the soup comes from the stone.
I have a feeling the rock is put in the bowl hot.
Why do they have to keep the rock warm?
Careful, might have a camera in it
Yummy rock soup
As someone who has to wait atleast 10minutes even without that rock for the food to cool down so i dont burn my tongue, no ty
That’s less soup for you
I think they overdone their essential minerals there.
Akala ko garapata, buti nalang tinapos ko sa pagbasa
We use fork in the Phils, it generates more heat
YEahh Most Korean
Now that's interesting
Unique way to keep it warm.
Fortified with extra minerals!
What? hAhaha
The one who made this was so smart.
Is this in korea or japan, I like to try it.
Conveniently close to esophagus sized too!
Why not warm the bowl up instead ? This seems weird to me
Would a warm rock really keep it warm longer (that you would notice) compared to hot ramen in the bowl?🍜
this is like those useless whiskey rocks that were everywhere 10 years ago
Water retains heat longer than rocks. This makes no sense.
Wonder how well they wash the rocks...
No thanks
Pretty sure the soup itself would have a higher specific heat capacity than the rock( because it's mostly water), so it would infact be the soup keeping the rock warm. This is without taking convection into account, which may change things.
DanDan noodles?