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Hint: Foaming of Steamers

I work in the pharma industry, I have raised an infant, and I like steaming rice and shrimp.  Rice cookers have an overflow catch that helps trap foaming steam from escaping.  I keep the leftover gas drops that I used to give my daughter, in a cabinet above my rice cooker.  I have seen the active ingredient, Simethicone, used as an anti-foaming agent in over-the-counter medicines on the manufacturing floor.  That's probably how it prevents gas in babies,  it keeps the foam/bubbles from forming and passing further in the GI tract.

So I added a drop or two to the trap of my rice cooker which was sputtering and voila! The sputtering stopped and I opened the cooker and the bubbles were gone.  No added taste.
The next time I had shrimp in my cookware steamer, lower pot and strainer, I added a couple of drops and this prevented the annoying phenomenon of the boiling water becoming more foamy and foamy until it's up in the strainer, effectively boiling your shrimp and taking away my sacred Old Bay seasoning.
If you're worried about the effects of simethicone.  The adult dosage for simethicone is 500 milligrams.  500 mg = 1/2 millilliter = 10 drops, so 1 drop would be a tenth of an effective dose (and that 's if all of it actually is consumed).


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