Broccoli, asparagus, peas, green beans … These and many other vegetables have one thing in common: by “catching” the very bright emerald color during cooking, you will make them look even more appetizing on the plate than before heat treatment – a case for vegetables is not that unprecedented, but it is rare (with tomatoes, for example, this trick will not work). Therefore, let’s figure out – how to maintain the required color when cooking green vegetables?
- Vegetables must be thoroughly washed and all ugliness removed – they will be especially noticeable on bright green.
- There should be a lot of water in which you will cook vegetables – 6 times more in volume than the vegetables themselves.
- The water should be steeply salted and boiled with a key. After adding vegetables to the water, the boil should not be interrupted.
- Do not cover the pan during cooking: it is believed that if the enzyme that destroys chlorophyll does not come out with the steam, it will not be possible to achieve a green color.
- We cook for a short time, a few minutes – so the color will turn out as needed, and less nutrients will go into the water. The vegetable is ready when it is already soft, but still crunches slightly. The cooking time for different vegetables is different.
- If you are not going to serve vegetables right away, put them in a bowl of ice water to stop cooking immediately.
- Steaming vegetables is usually easier to maintain their color than steaming them in water – but overexposing vegetables over steam will still darken them.
- When cooking frozen vegetables, the volume of water should be significantly increased, since the temperature of the vegetables will significantly cool the water – and it, we recall, should boil all the time.
- There should be a lot of water in which you will cook vegetables – 6 times more in volume than the vegetables themselves.
- The water should be steeply salted and boiled with a key. After adding vegetables to the water, the boil should not be interrupted.
- Do not cover the pan during cooking: it is believed that if the enzyme that destroys chlorophyll does not come out with the steam, it will not be possible to achieve a green color.
- We cook for a short time, a few minutes – so the color will turn out as needed, and less nutrients will go into the water. The vegetable is ready when it is already soft, but still crunches slightly. The cooking time for different vegetables is different.
- If you are not going to serve vegetables right away, put them in a bowl of ice water to stop cooking immediately.
- Steaming vegetables is usually easier to maintain their color than steaming them in water – but overexposing vegetables over steam will still darken them.
- When cooking frozen vegetables, the volume of water should be significantly increased, since the temperature of the vegetables will significantly cool the water – and it, we recall, should boil all the time.
In order for the vegetables to retain their green color, you do not need to salt the water. Well, I have committed a mortal sin – by this statement of mine. All unanimously say that salted water helps to preserve the green color of vegetables, and anyone who questions this should be pelted with stones and more.
There are key turning points in people’s lives. I confess that for me such a turning point was the boiling of green beans. According to orthodox culinary teaching, green vegetables should be immersed in a large amount of boiling, highly salted water so that the added vegetables do not stop boiling. My problem was that I could not boil enough water on the gas stove in my restaurant, and I had to boil the green beans no more than eight servings at a time, otherwise the water would stop boiling, the pods would rather “languish” than cook, and take a nasty brownish tint.
It is clear that I mean properly cooked green beans – with a fresh, slightly herbal flavor, easy to chew, and not shiny green pods, which are so undercooked that they do not just crunch, but “squeak” when biting, in other words – half-baked.
Cooking green beans became a mania for me, and I decided to learn the mechanics of boiling green vegetables. The first thing I noticed was that all the recipes consistently noted salted water as an absolute necessity for color preservation, without explaining why at all.
Green beans do not become salty from boiling in salted water. Green beans are always salted after boiling. The only explanation that came to my mind was that salt raises the boiling point of water.
Harold McGee’s fascinating book On Food And Cooking, The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen says that there is an enzyme that breaks down chlorophyll, and therefore green color. This enzyme becomes active in warm water and is destroyed by evaporation. I figured the mystery of adding salt to water was finally solved – salt raises the boiling point and helps keep the water at the boiling point when the pods are added to the water, thus preventing the enzyme from working.
For the sake of interest, I decided to measure the difference between the boiling point of salted water and unsalted water (for reference, I note that for cooking green vegetables, salting is usually always the same, at the rate of 40 grams of salt per liter). To my deep surprise and disappointment, the boiling point of salt water was not much different from the boiling point of unsalted water. Once at home, I decided to try boiling green vegetables in unsalted water. I took a bunch of broccoli that turned yellow at the ends of the inflorescences and boiled it in unsalted tap water. I even digested broccoli on purpose, but it turned out that even with this yellowed bunch, the green parts remained bright green. It became clear to me that I needed to find a scientist interested in cooking.
I eventually tracked down Peter Barham, a physics professor at the University of Bristol and author of the recently published book, The Science Of Cooking.
He confirmed that salt is not really needed to keep vegetables green, but as it turned out, the most important thing for this is the quality of the water itself, in particular the calcium content in it. Calcium is the enemy of green vegetables; they lose their green color when the calcium level in the water is high. And as it turned out, the water in my house contained much less calcium than the water in my restaurant.
So, if the water contains no more than 20 mg of calcium per liter, and if, after adding green vegetables to boiling water, it returns to the boiling point almost immediately, then the vegetables will retain their green color (if there is no other way out, you will have to buy mineral water with a low calcium content). So the chlorophyll-degrading enzyme turns out to be innocent.
It turned out to be debunked and another culinary myth that when cooking green vegetables, the pan should never be covered with a lid, otherwise the vegetables will lose their color. Conversely, in a lidded saucepan, the water will reach the boiling point faster after adding vegetables.
In order for the vegetables to retain their green color, you do not need to salt the water. Well, I have committed a mortal sin – by this statement of mine. All unanimously say that salted water helps to preserve the green color of vegetables, and anyone who questions this should be pelted with stones and more.
There are key turning points in people’s lives. I confess that for me such a turning point was the boiling of green beans. According to orthodox culinary teaching, green vegetables should be immersed in a large amount of boiling, highly salted water so that the added vegetables do not stop boiling. My problem was that I could not boil enough water on the gas stove in my restaurant, and I had to boil the green beans no more than eight servings at a time, otherwise the water would stop boiling, the pods would rather “languish” than cook, and take a nasty brownish tint.
It is clear that I mean properly cooked green beans – with a fresh, slightly herbal flavor, easy to chew, and not shiny green pods, which are so undercooked that they do not just crunch, but “squeak” when biting, in other words, half-baked. green beans became a mania for me, and I decided to learn the mechanics of cooking green vegetables.
The first thing I noticed was that all recipes consistently noted salted water as an absolute must for color retention, without explaining why. Green beans do not become salty from boiling in salted water. Green beans are always salted after boiling. The only explanation that came to my mind was that salt raises the boiling point of water. In Harold McGee’s most interesting book, On Food And Cooking, The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen) says that there is an enzyme that destroys chlorophyll, and therefore green color. This enzyme becomes active in warm water and is destroyed by evaporation.
I figured the mystery of adding salt to water was finally solved – salt raises the boiling point and helps keep the water at the boiling point when the pods are added to the water, thus preventing the enzyme from working. For fun, I decided to measure the difference between the boiling point of salted water. and unsalted water (for reference, I note that for cooking green vegetables, salting is usually always the same, at the rate of 40 grams of salt per liter). To my deep surprise and disappointment, the boiling point of salt water was not much different from the boiling point of unsalted water.
Once at home, I decided to try boiling green vegetables in unsalted water. I took a bunch of broccoli that turned yellow at the ends of the inflorescences and boiled it in unsalted tap water. I even digested broccoli on purpose, but it turned out that even with this yellowed bunch, the green parts remained bright green. It became clear to me that I needed to find a scientist interested in cooking. Eventually I tracked down Peter Barham, a physics professor at the University of Bristol, author of the recently published book The Science Of Cooking. He confirmed that salt really is not needed to keep vegetables green, but as it turned out, the most important thing for this is the quality of the water itself, in particular the calcium content in it.
Calcium is the enemy of green vegetables; they lose their green color when the calcium level in the water is high. And as it turned out, the water in my house contained much less calcium than the water in my restaurant.
So, if the water contains no more than 20 mg of calcium per liter, and if, after adding green vegetables to boiling water, it returns to the boiling point almost immediately, then the vegetables will retain their green color (if there is no other way out, you will have to buy mineral water with a low calcium content).
So the enzyme that breaks down chlorophyll turns out to be innocent in general. Another culinary myth has also been debunked that when cooking green vegetables, the pot should never be covered with a lid, otherwise the vegetables will lose color. Conversely, in a lidded saucepan, the water will reach the boiling point faster after adding vegetables.
- Rosemary – 40 seconds
- Fennel – 15 seconds (dill falls into this category, I guess)
- Chives – do not blanch, just hold under hot water for 2 minutes
- Parsley – 15 seconds
- Mint – 15 seconds
- Thyme – 40 seconds
After that, the herbs are cut to make it easier for the blender to work and beat with olive oil until smooth. Store in the refrigerator – I wish everyone an exciting culinary experiment.