It's pretty normal. If it's simmering there shouldn't be bubbles breaking the surface. There's no reason to think your thermometer is wrong though.
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
12 points (87.5% liked)
No Stupid Questions
45456 readers
888 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Well if I get botulism or something I'll let ya know
Simmer is just below bubbles I was taught! I made chicken stock from bones, used my thermometer that was calibrated so I know was working, also got around 204 and the surface just sort of glistens. No bubbles on the surface though!
Well that's a relief to hear I didn't waste 6 hours of simmering time. Appreciate the first hand experience!
Simmering without bubbles means one of these four:
- You're measuring in Kelvin
- No water and only grease
- Temperature is lower than what you're actually measuring
- Ambient pressure is too high. (You're not in a diving bell, are you?)
Your temperature measurement is probably off. Either that, or the water evaporated long ago and you're now only heating the grease.
There's still about 2 litres of water in there. I am currently not in a submarine. I should call the Mythbusters.
So... 203 °F = 96 °C...
That's right on the margin where bubbles are really inevitable. It you are heating the water in a very homogeneous way, and has a lid or some salt dissolved, it's possible you don't see any bubble. It's not common, but hey, everybody sees a few uncommon things in their life.
Lid on and some salt in it. So no bubbles is considered normal for a simmer still?
If you measured the water temperature, the thermometer has a better measurement than the presence of bubbles or not. And it's the temperature that is important, not the bubbles.
Thank you, I can sleep soundly tonight
My immediate guess is that the measurement is off (measuring pot temp instead of water temp, perhaps) or you're at a really low elevation/there's weirdly high air pressure? The former is far more likely than the latter, usually people only experience water boiling sooner than expected due to high elevation. It should absolutely be simmering at 203
100m above sea level, I've used both my instant read and leave in thermometers to check now, both say 203. Made sure not to touch the pot with the needles.
I'd just raise the temp slowly until it starts boiling. The only reason I can think it wouldn't be simmering at that temp is that the water has been boiled off, but that's almost certainly not the case here.
But I've never made stock before.
The problem with raising the temp is that I have an induction stove. It's on the lowest setting now (L) and when I bump it up to the next setting (2) it is a full rolling boil even if I adjust the lid. There doesn't seem to be any configuration to keep small consistent bubbles like the simmer setting on my old electric stove had.
I've measured the temp with my instant read as well as my leave in thermometer now and they do both say 203 but the zero bubbles is throwing me off.
I found with induction on low it would sit for some length of time then for a few seconds boil, then sit. Repeat. Didn't seem to be a low power, it just made the period between energizing longer. Newer induction stoves are supposed to be better though. Have you tried a different sized pot to see if the change in thermal mass helps
It's an ikea stove that came with the place so I'm not expecting the best quality or accuracy I guess. The broth is done and it's late so I'll have to give my smaller pot a try tomorrow. I should probably look into a better single burner induction plate that adjusts by the exact temperature in the future though.
Tried a smaller pot today and the temp was reading 200, completely still surface
It would be a good test to boil plain water and see if your thermometer reads 212°F
Just measured a rolling boil at 212.9 so the thermometer ain't lying I guess
So should be good then, technically a boil from water to steam is at that exact temperature , so less than that shouldnt be boiling. Maybe inductions have gotten that good where it doesn't raise into the boil and drop back out?
Ya, I'm still new to this stove so it could just be an induction thing