From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishboil down phrasal verb1 boil down to something informal if a long statement, argument etc boils down to a single statement, that statement is the main point or cause It boils down to a question of priorities.2 boil something ↔ downREDUCE to make a list or piece of writing shorter by not including anything that is not necessary You can boil this down so that there are just two main categories.3 DFCif a food or liquid boils down, or if you boil it down, it becomes less after it is cooked Spinach tends to boil down a lot.boil something ↔ down glue made from boiling down old sheepskins → boil→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
boil down to something• Tackling these more stubborn obstacles will boil down to better schools and plain old dollars and cents.• But by any measure, the Republican presidential campaign right now boils down to Dole and Forbes.• The real problem boils down to identifying the nature of the problem itself.• The Grid boils down to only five behaviour patterns - the four extremes and the middle one.• Love boils down to pheromones, it says.• To Smolan, the decision to leave so late in the game boiled down to quality.• Honestly, it does all just boil down to the need to learn something.• In the end, the case will boil down to whether the jury believes Smith or not.• It boils down to whether you think the extra features and quality are worth the extra money. 