The holiday season is upon us, and that means it is time to start inviting family and friends to our holiday get-togethers and deciding what food we are going to serve (even if our tables are a little more social distanced than past years). Many of our favorite holiday menu items rely on water for their cooking (turkey, vegetables, stuffing, mashed potatoes and more), so it is very important to consider how your drinking water will impact the flavor of your holiday feast.

Can clean water make a difference in how my food tastes?

November is the start of a two-month stretch of secular and religious holidays. And even though the COVID-19 pandemic has altered how many people will celebrate this year, the same meal decisions must be made for their smaller, more socially distanced gatherings. Should you cook a turkey or goose or walk on the wild side and make a honey-baked ham? Would green beans make Grandma happy or should you stick with glazed carrots? All of these holiday staple foods can turn out terribly if the water you are using to cook them in isn’t filtered.

Filtered water helps preserve foods’ natural flavors. Instead of tasting water tainted with minerals, chemicals, or heavy metals such as iron, your holiday meal will taste fresh and full of flavor. We can’t guarantee that your turkey will be juicier because you used filtered water, but we can say your turkey will taste like turkey. Water systems also will filter out the fluoride and chlorine that many municipal water systems add to their water to help treat it for contaminants before distributing it to homeowners and businesses throughout the city. Chemicals such as chlorine also can act like a bleaching agent, taking the vibrant colors right out of your vegetables!

Filtered water isn’t just about great-tasting and healthier food! It also improves the flavor of your favorite holiday drinks and cocktails. Using ice made from filtered water can chill your favorite refreshment without the addition of unwanted flavors. You will also get a better flavor from your coffee and tea because your coffee beans and tea leaves won’t be diluted by the chemical or metallic taste of unfiltered water.  

Chlorinated water can make food taste odd, especially staples such as pasta, rice, potatoes, and beans that soak up the fluid as they cook. Most pasta and rice don’t have distinctive tastes on their own, which means they are more susceptible to picking up the flavors of your tap water. So the best recipe for your Thanksgiving mashed potatoes could very well be clean water!

Some homemade items that are a must for the holidays, such as fresh-baked bread or cinnamon rolls, require yeast to rise. The unwanted chemicals in municipal and well water can retard the yeast’s ability to ferment and thus stop the dough from rising. Hard water can also slow down the fermentation process. Hard water usually occurs when water flows through areas with heavy minerals (think calcium and magnesium). Hard water not only leaves foggy white spots on all of your holiday silverware and glasses, but it can also smell bad and taste terrible.

What type of water filtration works best?

The gold standard of water filtration is reverse osmosis, which takes drinking water from your faucet and forces it through several filters and a permeable membrane that can weed out nearly all of the minerals, chemicals, dissolved solids, and bacteria found in both municipal water supplies and well water.

At Kinetico by Kwater, we serve households and businesses in Las Vegas, Nev.; and Orlando, and Daytona, Fla. Our experienced team helps our customers filter out the impurities and soften the water coming out of their taps. Our most popular system, the K5 Drinking Water Station, is the most advanced reverse osmosis filtration system available, producing more than 40 gallons of crisp, filtered drinking water every day. The K5 works well for homes that are served by municipal water supplies as well as homes that use well water. If homeowners are more interested in a more basic reverse osmosis filtration system, the A200 is a small, convenient water system with a three-stage filtering approach that provides clean, refreshing, filtered water for drinking and cooking. This system uses a reverse osmosis membrane and filter cartridges for low-maintenance water filtration.

The step to clean water starters with a free water analysis with Kwater. Our water specialists will come to your home and identify the issues and concerns that may be impacting your drinking water. We will then recommend a water filtration system that will help to address those specific problems in your home. Kinetico has solutions for most water problems that will fit your budget and the space available in your home. 

We wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving!