Parboiling

Parboiling means to cook something in a lot of boiling salted water for a short time, anywhere from a few seconds (fresh herb leaves) to five minutes (carrots). The vegetables or herbs are then plunged into an ice bath to refresh them, stopping the cooking and setting the color.

Parboiling is one of the nastier habits of restaurant cooking, but is not often questioned. The point is to have the vegetables cooked half or three quarters of the way in advance, to cut down on the time it takes to get the food to the customer. This is a horrible practice, because in reality, if you are organized and know how to set up the cooking line (hot-water faucets over the pots on the back burners, lots of extra pots coming to the boil so that the water is fresh and the cook does not have to wait for the new water to boil, and so on), there should be no delays, and most vegetables take no time to cook from the raw state anyway. The same goes for the home. Once the big pot of salted water is boiling, ten minutes for cooking, draining, and seasoning the vegetables is all the time it takes.