Blanching vegies

Vegetables are best eaten as fresh as possible.

Blanching vegetables is quite a simple technique. Blanching vegetables enables them to be used in  a variety of serving ways. Blanching allows you to serve the vegies cold as a snack with dip (especially good for little ones) and it will retain all the goodness.

Blanched vegetables can be used in crudité platters, salads, sushi rolls, and stir fries.

Blanched vegetables are good for vegie salads such as potatoes for potato salads and cauliflower for cauliflower salads.

Blanched vegetables can be refrigerated or frozen. Blanching is recommended if you are going to be freezing your vegetables as it slows or stops the enzyme action which can cause loss of flavor, color and texture.

Blanching time is very important. You can over and under blanch. Underblanching stimulates the activity of enzymes and is worse than no blanching. Overblanching causes loss of flavor, color, vitamins and minerals.

It also has very few ingredients. All you need aside from the vegetables is water, ice and salt.

1. Have all your ingredients ready. A bowl of water with ice. This is known as an ice bath and is what your vegetables will go into.
2. Boil water. Have your water boiling before you add your vegies.
3. Just before they soften remove them. This is generally between 2-5 minutes.
4. Place them into the bowl of iced water to cool.
5. Remove them when they are completely cool and dry them.

Tip: If you are blanching more than one vegetable do them one at a time.