Why does the water foam up when boiling chicken?

Question

Why does the water foam up when boiling chicken?

Answer 1

The hot water extracts (takes stuff out of) protein from the chicken. Once there is protein in the water the bubbles formed from bubbling are stronger, so they hang around longer, and that's how you get foam when you boil chicken.

Answer 2

I have to say its because the chicken has acidic water inside of it because of all the preservatives put inside of it to keep the chicken fresh.

So when u cook it and the water in the bowl mixes with water inside the chicken the water foams........i think

Answer 3

The introduction of heat induces spontaneous cellular lysis, releasing various cellular components. Some of these components are surface active, or surfactants. Surfactants are molecules consisting of two or more moieties that differ in polarity. Generally, these are molecules that consist of a polar head and a non-polar tail.

Surface active compounds lower the chemical potential in the solution. This leads to various spontaneous formations of the surfactants. These formations can vary from being a monolayer [with the polar heads pointing towards the water molecules and the non-polar tails pointing towards an outside surface (e.g. air)], a bilayer [where one can imagine two monolayers placed back-to-back where the non-polar tails touch], or a micelle [where it forms a dynamic spherical structure where the polar heads are oriented toward the water while the nonpolar tails conglomerate inside the sphere].

The formation of a monolayer of the surfactant results to an increase in intermolecular forces of attraction (i.e. non-polar tails are now also in contact with one another, exacerbating the effect of surface tension).

Bubbles are then easier and more frequently formed simply because more energy is needed to overcome the formation of more intermolecular forces of attraction (H-bonding by water, and london forces by nonpolar species).