Simple Science for Better-Than-Restaurant Blanched Vegetables
If you’ve ever eaten in a cafeteria, then you’re no stranger to boiled vegetables that used to be green but are now some repulsive grayish color. These overcooked vegetables are mushy, ugly, have reduced flavor, and in my opinion, they’re the leading cause of kids not liking vegetables.
Why does this happen?
When you cook vegetables, it breaks down their cell walls. This causes the loss of enzymes that preserve color, flavor, texture, and nutritional value. The longer you cook vegetables, the more they’ll lose—less color, less flavor, and much less nutrition.
However, if there’s a special goldilocks zone where magic happens. If you cook vegetables for just long enough, you’ll break down their cell walls enough to soften the vegetables for immediate consumption (or for other upcoming cooking techniques). This has an interesting effect of making their colors POP, and it results in minimal nutrient loss.
Once you’ve had a properly blanched vegetable, you’ll never look at greens the same way. There are few things as simple and delicious as bright green, salty (and maybe a little buttery) broccoli, green beans, or spinach.
First: Get a big pot of water, and add so much salt to it that it tastes like the ocean.
Why? Think way back to your eighth grade biology class. When you immerse your vegetables in water, it creates an environment where a bunch of the good things inside the veggies want to come outside of the veggies. Thus, they lose color and nutrients, and by the end of cooking, your water has turned green. That’s not good. But if you load that water with salt, it’ll prevent that nutrient leakage from occurring. And don’t worry, all that salt won’t somehow find its way inside your vegetables. Rather, some nice, salty water will coat the exterior of your vegetables, and you’ll end up with some perfectly seasoned greens.
Second: It is best to blanch your vegetables in plenty of boiling water. If you have only “just enough” water to cover your veggies, then it’ll lose a lot of its heat when you drop your veggies in. This will make your cooking time take longer, which means your greens will spend more time in the water, which means there is more potential to overcook them, lose nutrients, and ruin their color and texture. Go big on this.
Third: Keep a bowl of ice water on standby to “shock” your vegetables. Your veggies won’t take long to cook—maybe five minutes. Keep a careful eye on them, and you’ll notice the colors pop, almost like the vegetables have started glowing. That means they’re done, and they’ll soon start to lose color (and flavor, and nutrients). Stab them with a fork, and if they’re as soft as you want them to be, remove them from the boiling water and immediately drop them in the ice water. This is called shocking your vegetables, which is a process to rapidly halt the cooking process.
You can eat them immediately, or you can store them in the fridge or freezer. Fun fact, blanched vegetables freeze incredibly well—they don’t lose much of their texture when frozen for some reason, and they’ll keep for up to three months before they start losing flavor.
That’s it. It’s really that simple. Blanched greens are the perfect way to appreciate simplicity, or enjoy a quick meal. They’re also proof that you don’t always need a fancy spice mix to make good food; sometimes you just need proper technique. In fact, maybe all those random spices and store-bought sauces we sometimes throw all over our food are just compensation, because we know that we could do a better job in the actual cooking!
Let me know the next time you blanch some vegetables. And let me know if it changes your perception of veggies!
cold water
plenty of salt
1 bag or 4 cups fresh green beans
ice water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Directions:
Add Recipe to Cook'n
blog comments powered by Disqus
Why does this happen?
When you cook vegetables, it breaks down their cell walls. This causes the loss of enzymes that preserve color, flavor, texture, and nutritional value. The longer you cook vegetables, the more they’ll lose—less color, less flavor, and much less nutrition.
However, if there’s a special goldilocks zone where magic happens. If you cook vegetables for just long enough, you’ll break down their cell walls enough to soften the vegetables for immediate consumption (or for other upcoming cooking techniques). This has an interesting effect of making their colors POP, and it results in minimal nutrient loss.
Once you’ve had a properly blanched vegetable, you’ll never look at greens the same way. There are few things as simple and delicious as bright green, salty (and maybe a little buttery) broccoli, green beans, or spinach.
How to Perfectly Blanch Vegetables
Proper blanching is a combination of two concepts—preventing osmosis and controlling thermal energy. But a simpler way to put it is this: lots of salt, lots of hot water, and ice.First: Get a big pot of water, and add so much salt to it that it tastes like the ocean.
Why? Think way back to your eighth grade biology class. When you immerse your vegetables in water, it creates an environment where a bunch of the good things inside the veggies want to come outside of the veggies. Thus, they lose color and nutrients, and by the end of cooking, your water has turned green. That’s not good. But if you load that water with salt, it’ll prevent that nutrient leakage from occurring. And don’t worry, all that salt won’t somehow find its way inside your vegetables. Rather, some nice, salty water will coat the exterior of your vegetables, and you’ll end up with some perfectly seasoned greens.
Second: It is best to blanch your vegetables in plenty of boiling water. If you have only “just enough” water to cover your veggies, then it’ll lose a lot of its heat when you drop your veggies in. This will make your cooking time take longer, which means your greens will spend more time in the water, which means there is more potential to overcook them, lose nutrients, and ruin their color and texture. Go big on this.
Third: Keep a bowl of ice water on standby to “shock” your vegetables. Your veggies won’t take long to cook—maybe five minutes. Keep a careful eye on them, and you’ll notice the colors pop, almost like the vegetables have started glowing. That means they’re done, and they’ll soon start to lose color (and flavor, and nutrients). Stab them with a fork, and if they’re as soft as you want them to be, remove them from the boiling water and immediately drop them in the ice water. This is called shocking your vegetables, which is a process to rapidly halt the cooking process.
You can eat them immediately, or you can store them in the fridge or freezer. Fun fact, blanched vegetables freeze incredibly well—they don’t lose much of their texture when frozen for some reason, and they’ll keep for up to three months before they start losing flavor.
That’s it. It’s really that simple. Blanched greens are the perfect way to appreciate simplicity, or enjoy a quick meal. They’re also proof that you don’t always need a fancy spice mix to make good food; sometimes you just need proper technique. In fact, maybe all those random spices and store-bought sauces we sometimes throw all over our food are just compensation, because we know that we could do a better job in the actual cooking!
Let me know the next time you blanch some vegetables. And let me know if it changes your perception of veggies!
Matthew's Blanched Green Beans
Blanched vegetables are absolutely delicious if you make them right. Whenever I cook these, I eat them first off my plate and go back for seconds. My favorite part about these is they're a celebration of simplicity and a full display of good cooking technique. With just a handful of simple ingredients, you can beat the socks off of most vegetable dishes, even beating out many restaurant dishes.
Ingredients:cold water
plenty of salt
1 bag or 4 cups fresh green beans
ice water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Directions:
1. Fill a large pot with cold water (it should be cold because hot water goes through your water heater, which carries small sediments with it, which affect the flavor of your water and veggies).
2. Heat the water to a rolling boil. As the water heats up, dissolve enough salt in it that it tastes like ocean water. Yes, you want it THAT salty. It will not make your veggies super salty. Most of that salt will stay in the water, but the abundance of salt will do some fancy science to your vegetables that keeps all their flavor and nutrients in them instead of leeching out and into the water.
3. Once the water is at a rolling boil, drop in your veggies.
4. Blanch your veggies for several minutes. Watch carefully, and you'll notice that at a certain point the colors will POP! The green suddenly gets more green, and after this point, it will start to lose color and turn gray. Before that happens, take your vibrant veggies and drop them in ice water. This is called shocking your veggies, and it rapidly halts the cooking process so that your veggies don't slip past the perfection zone and into the gross-gray-mushy zone.
5. Once your veggies are shocked, but still warm, remove them from the ice water. Mix your butter and lemon juice in with them.
Voila, an incredibly simple dish just became one of the best parts of the meal and is reminiscent of a the veggies you would pay fifteen bucks for at an American steakhouse.
2. Heat the water to a rolling boil. As the water heats up, dissolve enough salt in it that it tastes like ocean water. Yes, you want it THAT salty. It will not make your veggies super salty. Most of that salt will stay in the water, but the abundance of salt will do some fancy science to your vegetables that keeps all their flavor and nutrients in them instead of leeching out and into the water.
3. Once the water is at a rolling boil, drop in your veggies.
4. Blanch your veggies for several minutes. Watch carefully, and you'll notice that at a certain point the colors will POP! The green suddenly gets more green, and after this point, it will start to lose color and turn gray. Before that happens, take your vibrant veggies and drop them in ice water. This is called shocking your veggies, and it rapidly halts the cooking process so that your veggies don't slip past the perfection zone and into the gross-gray-mushy zone.
5. Once your veggies are shocked, but still warm, remove them from the ice water. Mix your butter and lemon juice in with them.
Voila, an incredibly simple dish just became one of the best parts of the meal and is reminiscent of a the veggies you would pay fifteen bucks for at an American steakhouse.
Recipe formatted with the Cook'n Recipe Software from DVO Enterprises.
Matthew Christensen
Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2023
Email the author! matthew@dvo.com
Sources:
- www.bodyfusion.com
- www.islandinthenet.com
- www.myketokitchen.com
- www.pexels.com
