Blanching Vegetables

Vegetables are blanched for several different reasons: mostly either to part-cook because the ultimate cooking technique would otherwise take too long (or fail) to make them tender, or to cook the vegetables ahead.

Certain vegetables definitely benefit from a brief blanching process before being incorporated into dishes. For example, fine sliced leeks blanched for one minute, refreshed and then gently stewed with butter for 5 minutes are better than leeks cooked wit