Technique: Blanching

My Story

My son, who just turned 30, told me that he remembered me boiling veggies when he was a child. I had to smile when I corrected him, I did not and do not boil any veggies, other than those I am going to mash. While he did see me heat water to cook veggies, what the child missed and the adult understands now, is that what I was doing was steaming or blanching food. Many of us know all about steaming, but blanching is a cooking technique that many home cooks do not fully understand.

Blanching Definition + Process

Why Blanch Raw Food

I think of blanching veggies for five very specific reasons.

1. First, is when I want to have a vibrant green veggie (asparagus, green beans, broccoli, etc). Blanching makes the color of green veggies turn vibrant and vivid.
2. Second, is if I want to soften harder veggies, in order to prep them for further cooking. Examples are blanching asparagus for grilling, or softening hard carrots before I sauté and glaze in butter.
3. Third, is if I am going to freeze some veggies. Blanching helps to clean food surfaces of bacteria; helps preserve flavor, color and texture; and can slow the loss of vitamins before freezing.
4. Fourth, I use the blanching technique when I want to cook already cooked and frozen food. So to cook precooked or frozen peas or corn I may choose just to blanch them rather than boil.
5. Fifth, blanching in plain water can help peel certain fruits and vegetables, like tomatoes and peaches.

How to Blanch Veggies

Blanching involves placing food into salted boiling water for a short period of time, then removing and cooling the food. This process cooks food partially and quickly, yet the foods retain flavor and bright colors, a hallmark of blanching.

• Prep the veggies to blanch by cutting them to serving size.
  • If blanching several veggies, keep them separate as they will need to cook different times
• Boil salted water and keep it boiling.
  • Use a big pot of water.
  • Chef Olive adds lots of salt, and says it should taste like sea water. This would be ~1/4C per gallon of water.
  • Salted water seasons the food and helps preserve chlorophyll’s bright color.
• Put a portion of veggies in the water and cook until soft (a few seconds to a few minutes). Do not overfill, so put food in the boiling water in batches.
  • Some people call this “scalding” the food.
  • I decide when it is done based on taking out a veggie and squeezing it to see how soft it is.
• Use a metal strainer or “spider” to remove the veggies from the boiling water.
  • If blanching more than one food, blanch the light colored food before the darker colored food in case there is tinting left in the water.
• Now cool the food by using one of two techniques.
  • Pour the food into a bowl of ice water, called “shocking”, which will stop the cooking process immediately.
  • Place on a cooling rack that is in a baking sheet to drain and cool off naturally. The food will continue to cook while it cools, so pay attention and remove food from the boiling water before it is completely done.
• If shocking the food, dry the food with a paper towel or salad spinner.

If blanched the correct amount of time, the food will not be cooked all the way through, so will retain a bit of crunch in its center, or will be “el dente”.

Blanch for Color

BonChef explains: Boiling vegetables releases the gasses, giving us a clearer view of the green chlorophyll. So why can’t other cooking techniques produce the same color enhancing effect as blanching? Because after a few minutes of boiling, chlorophyll will break down, turning vegetables brown.

For more a more scientific explanation please see ScientificAmerica.

Blanch to Precook

Blanching can partially precook meals, and saves time when you need to cook later. This makes the cooking process faster.

I use blanching to partially cook harder veggies when I want to sauté them in butter or a sauce. Usually the veggies, like carrots, can get pithy if over cooked. So by blanching them first, I spend less time sautéing the carrots so their texture is kept, yet the food is tender.

Blanch for Storage

Blanching veggies prior to freezing, dehydrating, or canning is also a common technique. The reason is to primarily inactivate bacterias and enzymes, in addition to preserving color, flavor and nutritional values.  People often do not realize that this technique also will help remove residual pesticides, kills bugs and parasites (and their eggs), and reduces other microbes.

Blanch to Defrost + Warm

I use blanching to defrost and partially cook frozen peas or corn. This prevents any loss of retained nutrition and warms up the food.

Blanch to Peel

Blanching nuts, veggies (tomatoes), and fruit (peaches, plums) in unsalted water will aid in easily peeling off fruit and veggie skins. Let me give an example, using tomatoes.

• Wash the tomato and remove any stems
• Core the top of the tomato where the stem was, while raw since it is easier, then cut a small x into the other side to aid in peeling
• Boil in unsalted water for ~20 seconds
• Remove the veggies and peel

You can use all forms of tomatoes (Cherry, Heirloom, Green, etc.) but keep in mind they have various thickness of peel so some may need more time in the boiling water. The way to tell is to lift a tomato out of the water and check the X, if the peel starts to rip off easily it is done. Critical here is not cooking the tomato, we just want it blanched to peel.

Similar/Related Techniques

Par-Boil

Blanching and Par-Boiling start similar, that is raw food is placed in boiling water (salted or not) and removed. In blanching the food is removed after a small amount of time usually counted in seconds or minutes. In par-boiling the time is a bit longer, so it is counted in 1-8 minutes.

Many cooks consider what you are doing is blanching if you then put the food into ice water to stop further cooking. But if you do not and let the food cool in the air or start cooking the food right away, it is considered more like par-boiling. Again, it is related to the amount of time things are cooking.

To other cooks, blanching has the intent to soften food, while par-boiling is intended to almost cook the food all the way through.To me the difference is minor and I prefer to use the term blanching.

Velveting Chicken

Velveting chicken is a Chinese process of pre-cooking chicken breasts by blanching ~3 minutes. The chicken breast is chopped, doused in a wet mix, blanched, set aside until ready to add to the stir fry. By following this process, white meat will stay soft and juicy, and will generally not dry out.

TheKitchn writes, According to stir-fry expert Grace Young, velveting literally means to “pass through” oil or water. While the technique starts with coating the chicken pieces in a mixture of egg white, cornstarch, and rice vinegar, the chicken pieces are actually cooked briefly in boiling water or hot oil before stir-frying.

Glazing Veggies

There are different techniques Chefs have for glazing vegetables. I will speak only of what I know, that is using sugarish veggies (turnips, onions, carrots, etc.) and blanching them first so the outer layer is soft with a still crunchy layer inside. I will use carrots as my example.

• Cut the carrots in a roast-cut, and finely chop parsley.
• Blanch carrots in boiling salt water till the carrot has a soft exterior but a knife will not go through the carrot easily (center is still hardish).
• Remove from the boiling water (~2 minutes) and cool.
• Then heat a skillet, melt butter, add the carrots (single layer) to the pan to sauté.
• Cook until the carrots are done, then once off the heat, add parsley and serve.

The key in this dish is not to sauté too long. You do not want the carrots to cook to a brown caramelized condition, you want a satin look, from the sugars and reduced butter.

Blanching Veggie Guide

Blanching Asparagus

Heat a large pot of salted water and while that is cooking, wash and prep your asparagus.

• I do not remove the skin of green asparagus (while I do remove the skin of white asparagus) for the fiber and flavor of the veggie is in that skin. I do not like the refined look of a peeled asparagus, preferring instead to see its structure.
• Sometimes, depending upon the veggie, I may peel off some of the “leaves” so that the exterior is smoother, but that is it.
• Then I snap the bottom, pithy part of the asparagus and cook with only the top part of the spear.
• Then I bundle the spears together with twine (slip knot) to prevent the delicate tip from getting knocked around in the water. So I wrap the tips together then about 2/3rds down the spear I wrap again. Tighten and tie off.
• Chefs will often cut the ends once trussed up, so that they are more uniform, but home cooks should not for it is a waste of good food.
• Place in salted boiling water for ~2 minutes

Blanching Broccoli

Broccoli is one of those veggies with two parts, the florets which are softer and the stalk which is harder. So prepping the veggie requires washing and cutting the stalk from the florets, or head of the veggie. For the stalk, peel the stalk and cut off the pithy end of the stalk. (I tend to compost any leaves.) For the florets, separate and cut them into smaller pieces.

• Boil salted water and add stalks first until soft, will take a few minutes ~3-4 minutes
• Separately, blanch the florets on their own and cool when done (will be quicker, ~2 minutes)

This is good prior to freezing these veggies for later use. I also blanch when I am cooking the dense stalks with other less dense veggies as this precooks the stalks to make the cook time of all the veggies similar. An example is a stir-fry with onions, mushrooms, garlic and chopped broccoli stalks.

Blanching Green Beans

Okay, I have to state that I am not a green bean fan. However I have blanched green beans at Kitchen on Fire.

• Boil salted water
• Prep green beans by washing and removing the bean strings
• Blanch ~2 minutes then cool

You can then serve or freeze the veggie.

Blanching Meats

Meat Broth

When I make a broth I roast the meat first, as I want the meat and bones browned to impart some additional flavor, melt off some fat, and clean the meat. Then I put the bones + meat into my water-filled slow cooker to make my broth and discard the drippings.

But Asian cuisine calls for par-boiling, aka blanching, the same bones + meats to clean, remove excess fat, and gunk (technical term) from the food. Then the gunky-water is dumped, fresh water is added and the broth is made.

Firm Up Soft Meat

Some meats are very soft, and the best examples, brains and sweetbreads, are things Americans do not normally eat. With these meats blanching is used to temper the musty taste, and firm up the meat before further cooking. If not done, what you may have is a gelatinous mess.

Salutations

Blanching is an underused cooking technique in America, but used often in restaurants. Although I do not use this technique myself very often, if I want to have glazed carrots, this is the only way to cook them so they are flavorful and textured just right. If I grilled outside more I would definitely use this technique.

—p

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TIP: To actually consume the nutrition in flax seeds, you need to grind the seeds and turn flax seeds into flax meal. This is not the case with Chia seeds.

Science: Scientists headed by a team at the Innovative Academy of Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have developed transgenic rice that contains multiple antihypertensive peptides (MAHPs) derived from food proteins. When given to hypertensive rats, the transgenic rice flour lowered the animals’ blood pressure, with no evidence of adverse developmental or other side effects on either hypertensive rats, or normal, wild-type (WT) rats. What this means is that instead of pills, treating hypertension may involve eating a teaspoon of rice.

TIP: Asparagus should never be cooked in the microwave for it destroys the VitC this veggie contains. Steam, fry or roast the veggie instead.

TIP: Key to freezing bread is to double wrap it, and it helps if it is sliced so you can pull off just the amount you need. I like toasting frozen bread as it thaws the bread perfectly. Also do not attempt to freeze home made bread until it is completely cool, freezing warm food is never successful.