Vegetables

Vegetables can be the stars of a meal even at the world’s best restaurants. There are far too many circumstances and modes of preparation for this section to be exhaustive, so I’ll focus on two useful concepts that are part of the canon of classical technique: shocking and glazing.

Many home cooks may wonder how restaurants achieve such vibrant flavor and color in their cooked vegetables: the secret is plunging them in ice water after blanching or steaming. Blanching consists of submerging vegetables in rapidly boiling salty water, which can add flavor and/or leach out bitterness, while steaming retains more of the vegetables’ inherent flavor. Choose your method accordingly, but in both cases it’s crucial to have plenty of ice water on hand for shocking. Use a strainer or tongs to transfer the cooked vegetables to your ice bath. If you steamed the vegetables, you can salt the ice bath as a way of imparting flavor. Once thoroughly cooled, remove the vegetables from the ice bath to prevent excess water absorption and drain thoroughly, using a salad spinner if necessary. With green vegetables, the combination of rapid cooking and rapid cooling not only preserves the chlorophyll’s color, but actually enhances it by forcing out trapped gases. Shocking also ensures that the vegetables don’t continue to cook after being removed from the heat.