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Blanching is a very basic cooking technique
that I think should be a staple in everybody's repertoire,
and today I'm gonna show you
how to blanch sugar snap peas.
And the process is the same
no matter what vegetable you're blanching.
What I have here is about about a gallon of water
that I've seasoned with a couple of tablespoons of salt.
You should absolutely taste your water before you blanch
to make sure that it's seasoned properly.
And as soon as it gets up to the big boil,
go ahead and add whatever vegetable you're doing.
Wanna be careful not to add too much at once.
The idea behind blanching is you wanna maintain
that rapid boil the whole time that it's cooking.
And that's for a couple of different reasons.
Number one, we wanna cook
these vegetables quickly. In this case we're using
a green vegetable. It could be asparagus,
it could be green beans. When you're blanching
green vegetables, what that really helps
to do is set the color and it'll keep the nice vibrant
green even after they're cooked. But, it could be carrots,
it could be parsnips, any vegetable you want.
Basically what you're doing when you're blanching
is you're par-cooking your vegetables.
Another reason we add that salt to the water,
is it actually is going to season your vegetables
all the way through from the inside out.
'Cause after they're blanched, what I'm going to do
is I'm gonna go ahead and shock them.
Right, and I'm gonna put 'em right in this ice water.
And after that, they're gonna hold
for at least three days in my refrigerator,
and it's a very convenient item.
And what I'm gonna do is just check the doneness here.
And that's a personal preference as well.
Some people like a little more crunch to their vegetables.
And when they're done, I'm gonna plunge 'em
right in this ice water and that's gonna stop
the cooking immediately. So, when they're as
done as you want them, understand they're not
gonna cook any further. And you see,
I've had a constant boil going the whole time.
They're gonna cook very, very quickly.
And you can see, with these,
they're just a beautiful, bright, bright green.
So, these are ready to go. I'm just gonna carefully
drain them off. And I'm gonna
go right into my ice water.
And don't be afraid to have too much ice and too much water.
You wanna use almost as much water to shock
as you are too cook. Because what you wanna do,
is you want to chill these down almost immediately.
Just give 'em a quick stir, okay?
And I always recommend putting the strainer
right in that bowl of ice or your dish of ice.
So you're not winding up picking your vegetables
out of pieces of ice, just out of the water.
You can see pretty quickly that color is perfectly set
and these are cooked perfect, just what I want.
They go right in a stir fry, if I want.
But I can eat 'em raw in a salad.
Blanching is definitely something you need
to take advantage of at home.
It's gonna make your life a lot easier.