First, lots of water. Don’t crowd two pounds of green beans into a small sauce pan. Salt your water. It doesn’t have to taste like the ocean but you should be able to tell it’s salted. Make sure it comes to a complete boil. Throw the vegetable in.
Here comes the part that takes experience but don’t worry, you’ll get there. You need to take them off the heat a little bit before they are cooked to your liking because you will be reheating them which will cook them a tiny bit more.
This is why you’ll be reheating them. It is the absolute key to a bright color that the vegetable is cooled, very quickly, after being removed from the heat. This is called “shocking” and it seals the color. I don’t know the chemistry behind it, but believe me, it is what works. In a restaurant, where you have endless supplies of ice you would create what is called an ice bath by putting a bunch of ice and some water in a large bowl and dumping the just strained vegetables into it. Sometimes I still do this but the reality is most of the time I just run cold water over the vegetables in the strainer while moving them around. The idea is that they get as cold as possible as quickly as possible. Sometimes I dump a tray of ice over them while doing the running cold water technique, or I cool them down a bit with the running water and then put them back in the pot with cold water and some ice. Just make sure they are truly cold, inside and out.
When you are ready to serve them you can reheat them by sautéing them in olive oil, or butter, or throw a little water in the bottom of a sauté pan.
Here’s one of my new favorite things- cook string beans with the method above. In the pot that you cooked the beans put a little butter and two crushed cloves of garlic. Heat, dump in beans and cover. After a couple minutes turn the heat off and move the pan around so as to toss the beans in the butter and garlic. Serve. I love the super fresh garlic taste created by the steam that comes off the beans.
Here comes the part that takes experience but don’t worry, you’ll get there. You need to take them off the heat a little bit before they are cooked to your liking because you will be reheating them which will cook them a tiny bit more.
This is why you’ll be reheating them. It is the absolute key to a bright color that the vegetable is cooled, very quickly, after being removed from the heat. This is called “shocking” and it seals the color. I don’t know the chemistry behind it, but believe me, it is what works. In a restaurant, where you have endless supplies of ice you would create what is called an ice bath by putting a bunch of ice and some water in a large bowl and dumping the just strained vegetables into it. Sometimes I still do this but the reality is most of the time I just run cold water over the vegetables in the strainer while moving them around. The idea is that they get as cold as possible as quickly as possible. Sometimes I dump a tray of ice over them while doing the running cold water technique, or I cool them down a bit with the running water and then put them back in the pot with cold water and some ice. Just make sure they are truly cold, inside and out.
When you are ready to serve them you can reheat them by sautéing them in olive oil, or butter, or throw a little water in the bottom of a sauté pan.
Here’s one of my new favorite things- cook string beans with the method above. In the pot that you cooked the beans put a little butter and two crushed cloves of garlic. Heat, dump in beans and cover. After a couple minutes turn the heat off and move the pan around so as to toss the beans in the butter and garlic. Serve. I love the super fresh garlic taste created by the steam that comes off the beans.
1 comment:
Yum, I have to go cook something now!
I always steam my veggies or saute them in olive oil and garlic and maybe through in a herb or two. I want to try your method and luckily I went to the market yesterday and bought beans.
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