Essential VEGETABLE Technique
#1:
BLANCHING/STEAMING
Is there anything more beautiful on the plate than emerald-
green, perfectly tender-crisp stalks of blanched asparagus?
What are the tricks to achieving vegetables that both look
and taste fantastic?
We’ve all read enough books by big-name chefs to know
that when you cook a green vegetable, you’re supposed to
use a large pot of heavily salted water. But why? And is
volume the only thing that matters? What about lid-on
versus lid-off? Does pH play a role? And do I really need to
drop my green vegetable into a large bath of ice water
immediately after cooking? I gathered up a few pounds of
vegetables and headed into the kitchen to answer these
questions.
Volume and pH
I cooked a half pound of green beans in amounts of water
ranging from 2 cups all the way up to a full 2 gallons,
noting both the temperature of the water and the time it took
to cook the beans to tenderness in each case. Some trends
immediately started to surface. No matter how much water I
started with, the energy needed to bring the pot back to a
boil after I added the beans was the amount of energy it
took to raise the ½ pound of green beans up to 212°F, which
meant that every single pot returned to a boil at around the
same rate (for more on this, see “The Best Way to Cook