Cooking Methods: Blanching

If you’re a health nut, then you’ll love blanching. Blanching allows you to preserve the nutrients and vitamins in vegetables, which makes blanching a very clean way to make your veg. Another perk? The cooking time for blanching is short so blanched veggies are perfect when you’re short on time. 

But wait; let me explain what blanching is. When you blanch vegetables you cook them very quickly in salted, boiling water and then immediately plunge them in ice water to stop the cooking process. Doing this cooks your food from the outside in so that the vegetable maintains its crunch and fresh taste, which is enhanced with the addition of salt. 

Blanching also brightens your veggies by popping the air bubbles surrounding the chlorophyll (that’s what gives vegetables their bright colors), which accentuates the color (s’cute). 

The two main things you need to remember for blanching are that your water needs to be boiling hot (so bring that baby up to a roaring boil--Simba style), and that it needs to salty AF, so don’t be shy with the salt. 

Because there are a variety of veggies you can blanch, cooking times will vary. Depending on the thickness of what you’re cooking it will take anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes so you just need to trust your instincts and feel it out. You got this. 

instructions:

• Bring pot of water to boil

• Salt your water generously (it should taste like the tears of your enemies)

• Add your veggies to the water

• Strain vegetables

• Put vegetables in ice bath

So...blanching vegetables is AWESOME. With all the benefits of blanching, you seriously can’t go wrong. You won’t regret adding blanching to your cooking repertoire.