I imagine it would have to be some sort of impractically large closed-loop steam system, probably running around the perimeter of the pot, with a rotating paddle inside. Not at all practical, but it would be neat.
Presumably you can use something like a Stirling engine to power a stirrer.
I was gifted this thing called a power stir XL which is exactly that. Its a total waste of space.
Edit: oh never mind. I read “stirring engine”. I’m tired. My point still stands that it is a huge waste of space though.
yes there is , in chemistry they have this weighted object that is put in solution to stir it while its hot.
Those don’t work via the heat tho, the plate has a rotating magnetic field that rotates a magnetic stirrer
Bro has never seen boiling water.
I could swear I’ve seen some sort of small three pronged thing that you drop into your pot, and as the liquid boils, it spins and stirs it.
Convection currents have entered the chat
It’s called soup.
Then my soup isn’t working.
Well I didn’t want to say anything, but now that you brought it up…
True, there are soups like that.
It shouldn’t be difficult at all to add a stirrer that gets spun by the inductive field of an induction stove.
What I’d love to have tough is a pan with built-in temperature sensor, so that I can control the temperature of the pan directly instead of only being able to control the energy output of the stove.
Rice cookers do this, in a very simple way! They operate under four basic facts:
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Assuming you’ve added the correct amount of water, rice is cooked when all the water has boiled away.
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Water’s temperature can’t go over 100°C. After that, any additional energy goes toward boiling it away.
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The temperature of cooked rice and air, without water, can go over 100°C.
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Metals of different elements expand at different rates under different temperature conditions.
So the water gets up to temperature and begins to boil. As it boils away, it cooks the rice. Once it’s all gone, the temperature of the cooked rice (and thus the cooker) begins to rise above 100°; when it does, one half of a strip of two metals touching the cooker expands further than the other, bending the strip, breaking a contract, and opening the switch, which turns off the heating element.
Expanding beyond this very simple mechanism is absolutely possible! But the more configurable you want the temperature to be, the more expensive it gets. I bet the simplest way to do this would be to have a few different little probes you can clip to the inside of the pan, one for each temperature you might want to keep a pan at. Inside each would be a bimetallic strip calibrated to that temperature.
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Sous vide devices do this but they don’t go above boiling and probably won’t work well with higher viscosity liquids.
You’ve got a bright future in crazy Victorian inventions if you can make a steam-powered time machine to get there.
That only makes me think of the inevitable outcome:
Bright past.
2meirl4meirl
Best answer
At a rolling boil you could probably get the pot stirring itself with surface geometry. Bubbles boil upwards, so putting the right fin shape should get it spinning. Seems like it would require a bunch of machine work so it would probably be prohibitively expensive to make.
This exists. I tried to find a link or video but it seems to have disappeared.
Edit: Here’s a page on it. It’s from 2012 though, I guess the idea never really took off.
https://newatlas.com/kuru-kuru-nabe-self-stirring-saucepan/22709/
I had a friend with a similar pot (might have been the same one shown there) and… oh my god, it was impossible to wash. Just awful. Neat to watch but oh man, never got used after that.
Is it this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91yoFz5XFqY
Looks like it!
Can you imagine cleaning such a monstrosity though?
This already works with noodles if you place them vertical the middle and then twist them and let them fall in a spiral pattern leaning against the edge of the pot. As they soften and fall in they will spin in a toroidal shape powered by the bubbles.
If you get a good rolling boil, you shouldn’t need to stir macaroni.
Tho it is a bit of a waste of energy, since a rolling boil is more than you need to cook pasta.
I remember my high school science teacher saying that once you reach boiling point any extra energy input is wasted.
That doesn’t seem to be true in practice though.
I guess in a full rolling boil more of the water is at boiling point rather than just the layer at the bottom.
With modern induction cooking this should not be as problematic. You can use the magnetic field to put something in motion
I think there is some chemistry equipment that does that?
hot plates have a motor and a magnet that couples with a stir bar.
there is however this sort of thing for stoves: https://www.amazon.com/JossaColar-Fireplace-Electric-Accessories-Thermometer/dp/B0BDM14HVM
That’s for a wood stove, to distribute heat throughout the home. While it might be possible to repurpose it, I don’t think it’s very practical
Stir plates use magnets and magnetic stirers, and can be used without heat
Made my own stir plate once with a computer fan, magnets, and a potentiometer. I am sure they come with heat if needed. They can come with extremely large stirring bars.
Ok here’s my pitch: a pot with a steam powered magnetic stir bar system built into a sealed loop in the bottom.
I’ve thought long about this, specifically those devices that use the pizeo electric effect to move a fan.
Problem is that you need a temperature difference to make the effect go. But ideally I’m imagining a fish that swims around the pot converting heat to work.
