Water is essential for life, and we are fortunate that Australian tap water is generally good. But by the time it travels from the water treatment plant to your home, it may have picked up a number of contaminants such as metals, chemicals, unwanted minerals, and other impurities that can affect the quality of your water. This can affect the taste of drinking water, but it can also affect the food you cook.
Water and food
You might think to use a water filter jug to filter your drinking water, but have you thought of using filtered water when you cook too? The water we use when cooking is just as important as it impacts the taste of food.
It's easiest to see the effect of water in food when looking at pasta, rice, and noodles. All of these are staple ingredients in healthy cooking and make up many popular meals across Australia and New Zealand. But the tap water you cook your pasta or rice in can contain elements like calcium, magnesium, sodium, and more. While these elements aren't harmful (all drinking water in New Zealand goes through water treatment to be safe to drink), they can still affect the taste, odour, and quality of the water and the food you cook.
In a country like New Zealand, we experience plenty of environmental changes. Catastrophes such as droughts, bushfires, and wild storms could impact the quality of the water which we access through our taps.
BRITA jugs can help filter out and reduce impurities such lead, copper, chlorine and certain pesticides if present in tap water. Filtered water generally tastes better than plain tap water, due to reduced impurities, which also means that you can enjoy better tasting drinks like tea and coffee, not to mention less limescale build-up in your appliances. You'll also be able to enjoy richer flavours in the meals you cook.
How does filtered water help?
Using filtered water could help to preserve food’s natural flavour. By removing unnecessary contaminants like chlorine or metals, your food will taste better because unfiltered water may contain a metallic taste. Most fine restaurants and culinary experts use filtered water for cooking, so why shouldn’t we treat ourselves to the finest at home too?
If you love to bake bread, a water filtration system could be especially useful. Filtered water can increase the effectiveness of yeast in bread, helping the dough to rise more and lead to a softer, fluffier bread at the end.
Enjoy Your Kitchen and Water with Complete Peace of Mind
You can use a water filter jug, or you can get yourself an under-sink filter in the kitchen, or even a filtering system mounted on your kitchen tap that filters water straight from the tap.
When it comes to getting the most out of the food you're eating, using filtered water for cooking is a simple and easy thing to do, so you get better tasting meals.