Green vegetables often lose their bright emerald color during cooking. To prevent this from happening, you need to blanch them correctly. Then broccoli, asparagus, peas, green beans and others will be as beautiful on the plate as before cooking.
Rules for blanching vegetables:
1. Thoroughly wash the vegetables and remove any blemishes – they will be especially noticeable on bright green.
2. For cooking, take a lot of water – 6 times more by volume than the vegetables themselves.
3. Salt the water well before cooking, it should boil well. After adding vegetables to the water, the boil should not be interrupted.
4. Do not cover the pot during cooking: it is believed that if the enzyme that breaks down chlorophyll does not come out with the steam, it will not be possible to achieve a green color.
5. Cook vegetables for a short time, a few minutes. This way, less nutrients will go into the water, and the color will remain saturated. The vegetable should be soft, but slightly crunchy.
6. After cooking vegetables should be dipped in a bowl of ice water to stop cooking immediately.
7. You can preserve the color of vegetables by steaming them, however, the color will still be darker.
8. When cooking frozen vegetables, the volume of water must be increased, since the temperature of the vegetables will significantly cool the water, and it must boil all the time.
When it comes to leafy vegetables like spinach or herbs, you don’t need to boil them, but blanching will help give them a rich color and flavor.
Blanching time:
rosemary – 40 seconds
fennel and dill – 15 seconds
chives – hold for 2 minutes under hot water
parsley – 15 seconds
mint – 15 seconds
thyme – 40 seconds.