Contents
How to store
The main enemy of “vegetable” vitamins is light and heat: exposure to sunlight when storing vegetables increases loss of vitamin C threefold. Under these conditions, lettuce and greens can be completely deprived of this vitamin within a few hours. Store vegetables and herbs only in the refrigerator, in a tightly closed bag or container (ideally vacuum). Or freeze: Freezing keeps vitamins well.
Buy vegetables and herbs little by little – this way you will increase your chances of buying a truly fresh product and prevent it from losing its beneficial properties.
Give preference to completely ripe vegetables – they have more vitamins. With some exceptions: for example, in a red tomato, vitamin C, on the contrary, is less than in a semi-ripe one.
How to cook
Process to a minimum: cut as large as possible (or do not cut at all), leave the peeljust by brushing. First, there are more vitamins right under the skin than the average for the pulp; secondly, it will reduce the loss of vitamins.
Optimize the process: washed – and immediately into the pot, into the frying pan, into the mold and into the oven. If a vegetable or herb needs to be dried, do it right away, without delay: water and air – a bad combination for vitamins.
When cooking, put vegetables in boiling water and cover cover (especially when it comes to frozen vegetables). Do not let the water boil too much and do not interfere with it more often than necessary. And the broth, by the way, then use it in soups or sauces: it was in it that the “lost” vitamins went.
Add greenery at the very end of cooking, 3 – 5 minutes before turning off the heat.
Cook Short (the temperature there is lower than during cooking, and there is no contact with water), in a wok (the less time the vegetable is cooked, the less vitamins have time to break down), in the oven in parchment or pots (thereby limiting air access).
Contact with metal for vitamin C is destructive: use ceramic knives, do not use a meat grinder when preparing
Do not add baking soda as alkaline environment accelerates the loss of a number of vitamins.
But add (in vegetable soups, for example) cereals, flour and egg – they slow down the destruction of vitamins.
Try not to cook for future use and do not reheat what you have cooked several times.