Blanching Vegetables…Easy as 1, 2, 3

Blanching vegetables is literally as easy as boiling water. It’s key in preparing vegetables like green beans or asparagus when you want to get them tender-crisp and vibrantly colored. Here’s how you do it:

1. Boil a pot of water. Make sure your water is well salted — it should taste like the sea. Seasoning your cooking water will bring out the flavor of the veggies as they cook.
2. Drop your vegetables in and let them cook until they are tender-crisp. That last part is important. You want to cook the veggies long enough so that they lose that raw bite, at the same time, you don’t want to overcook them to the point of mush. Tender yet crisp, that’s what you’re looking for.
3. Strain out your vegetables and plunge them in ice water. Depending on what you’re blanching, the cooking process can go quickly so it’s a good idea to prepare a strainer and ice bath while the water is coming to a boil. That way, both are at the ready as soon as the veggies are done. If you wait until the last minute, those crucial minutes spent scrambling to get an ice bath set up could mean the difference between perfectly blanched veg and overcooked veg.

This is optional, but we like to salt our ice water too. This gives the veggies an extra seasoning boost and ensures that the flavor from the cooking liquid doesn’t just wash away in the ice bath.

Once your vegetables are blanched and shocked, dry them off and use anytime! They keep remarkably well in the fridge with a damp paper towel over them, in a container lined with a dry paper towel.