What's the big deal about cooking at high altitude?

Growing up in the Midwest I remember seeing cake mix adaptions for altitude over 1000 feet. First of all, I didn’t even really know what altitude over 1000 feet meant. Who would need those directions? Second, what did altitude have to do with baking a cake?

Fast forward to a move to Colorado years later. Altitude has everything to do with cooking! Hard boiled eggs took 10 minutes longer to cook, pasta was never done at the usual cook time, cakes that sunk in the middle, and other cooking issues became everyday challenges. Residing at 7100 feet wreaks havoc on a Midwest cook’s tried and true recipes. My first Christmas in Colorado I confidently made an old family cookie recipe that I had been able to  make on my own since I was very little. I popped a cookie sheet full of yumminess into the oven just before my son walked in the house. Smelling the familiar holiday treat he peeked in the oven. The quizzical look on his face told me immediately something was awry. My dozen small round cookies had melted into one large blob covering the entire cookie sheet! It has been 9 years in the mountains now and this year I was finally able to bake these cookies successfully (see picture).

Cookies Christmas 2024

Lack of air pressure here means things rise faster and water boils at a lower temperature than at sea level. Boiling at a lower temp is an interesting challenge. A simple lime curd pie filling became a stressful problem. Lime pie filling in a graham cracker crust-simple right? Using a new pie recipe for guests, no problem right? Start pie in the morning, takes about half hour to make the filling and prepare the whipped cream, seems simple. Filling ingredients in double boiler and we are underway, should be thick in about 15 minutes. Forty minutes later it is still runny! After 45 minutes of stirring the filling finally thickened and the pie turned out to be a total success, but I learned the importance of the temp of boiling water.

To make things even more complicated, every few hundred feet change in elevation changes how you adjust a recipe. My recipes that I adjusted to 7100 feet need further adaptation if I try and make them at 6000 feet. BTW, Denver sits at 5500 feet and our house only 45 miles south was at 7100. When we moved to the ranch in 2022 our elevation changed to 7500 feet so I’m still adjusting to that.  I have had more cooking flops since moving to Colorado than I had in my entire life before.

Fortunately I like to learn so I started studying the effects of high altitude on food preparation. Water boils at 198 degrees F at 7100 feet instead of the usual 212. Ah ha, pasta will take longer to cook because the water isn’t as hot even though it is boiling. Without the heavier air pressure that is at sea level, cakes rise too much then collapse causing them to sink dramatically in the middle. It took me a while but I learned to be patient and let boiled foods cook longer and to use less levening agents in baked goods along with adding extra flour. Those adjustments helped combat some of my cooking failures but there were plenty more to laughs and tears at along the way.

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