How to Blanch Vegetables

Featured Pro: Curtis Stone
Category: Cooking
Time: 2:21


CURTIS STONE: Hey, I’m Curtis Stone, and welcome to another GMC Trade Secret.

Now, today I’m going to deal with something really simple, but you’re going to really gain something from it. What I’m going to talk about is blanching green vegetables. Now, all blanching means is drop it into boiling water and then refreshing. Now, when I say refreshing, what I’m talking about is a big bowl of ice, just like that, and some cold water. Okay, they’re the only two things you need.

So I’ve got a pot of boiling water here. I’m going to add some salt. There we go. I’m going to do three different types of vegetables. I’ve got broccoli, asparagus and snap peas. Now, I’m going to cook them all in the same pot and they’ll all be ready together. But they take different lengths of time to cook.

So what you do is you start off with your broccoli and you pop it in. That’s going to take about three minutes. This is going to take about a minute and a half, the asparagus, and our snap peas like 30 seconds. So you put this in and then you give it about a minute and a half. The broccoli’s been in for a minute and a half, so it’s time to put in the asparagus, okay. So you take your asparagus spears, drop them in.

And see how it’s still got a nice rolling boil to it. That’s because it’s a nice big pot. If you use a small pot, what’ll happen is when you put the vegetables in, you drop the temperature of the water. It’ll go off the boil and you won’t keep that nice, crisp green color, which is what you want when you’re cooking green veggies.

That’s been in for another 30 seconds, so time for the snaps. Throw those in. And now literally 30 seconds and they’re done. Don’t overcook green veggies, because you want to keep that nice, vibrant color, and also that little bit of crunchiness to it. Give it a little stir. See, we’ve still got that boil going on, which is good.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to serve these vegetables cold, so I want to refresh them. When I say refresh, all you want to do is grab a big bowl of ice like this and then just fill it with water, okay. And again, don’t be stingy. Use plenty of ice and plenty of water, because you want to bring the temperature down from the vegetables as quick as you can. And then you just literally pull your vegetables out and straight into your ice bath, and it’s going to keep them nice and fresh.

Okay, so once you’ve got all your vegetables out, give this a little stir with the water and the ice, just to make sure that the temperature is nice and cool. And so that’s nearly melted all of the ice, which means we had just enough ice in there. So when you pull your veggies out, it should still have that nice snap to it.

I’m Curtis Stone, and that’s your GMC Trade Secret.