Want to keep your veggies fresh longer? What about a way to make cooking your meals more convenient while maintaining the nutrients in your food? Then it’s time to understand how to blanche your veggies.
everyone should be able to blanch veggies, especially if they grow their own. It’s a cooking method that everyone should know.
The technique can be used as a precursor to freezing or preserving your harvest with almost any vegetable, and it’s simple to do.
Ready to discover how to do this basic thing?
What is Blanching?
Blanching is essentially a concept that involves boiling. When you blanch vegetables in boiling water or steam for a brief time, it’s called blanching. Enzymes that contribute to the loss of flavor, color, and texture are stopped during the blanching process.
There are a lot of other reasons you should blanch your veggies. Blanching is also a good idea:
- Remove the dirt and organisms from the vegetables’ surfaces.
- Make the food’s color brighter.
- During cooking, prevent the loss of nutrients.
- Soften the veggies to make it easier to store and pack them.
- To peel tomatoes and peaches easier, loosen the skin.
- Reduce cooking times for longer cooking veggies, making it easier to grill them.
- Prep green beans for a casserole
- Remove the taste of onions or cabbages by removing their bitter or strong flavors.
- Before frying, potatoes are partially cooked.
Blanching is required if you want to freeze fresh veggies. Yet, since the ideal blanching period varies depending on the vegetable and size, it is important to learn how to do it properly.
It encourages the enzymes if you under-blanch the veggies, making it worse than if you had done nothing at all. It’s possible that flavor, color, vitamins, and minerals will be lost if you over-blanch.
The Two Types of Blanching
Let’s take a look at the different methods of blanching food and how to do it correctly.
Water Blanching
You probably blanched something in boiling water if you haven’t done so already. This may be done in a variety of ways. You may employ a strainer, a cover, or a wire basket that fits into a huge pot to blanch the vegetables.
Water blanching vegetables is a simple process with seven steps.
- Fill a large stockpot with water and then bring it to a boil. For every pound of vegetables you want to blanch, you’ll need around one gallon of water.
- Add plenty of salt.
- Bring it to a full-fledged, rolling boil.
- Put the vegetable you want to blanch into a basket and lower it into the boiling water. Lastly, place the lid on the pot.
- You begin the timer, ticking down the suggested number of minutes for whatever you’re blanching, when the water returns to a rolling boil. It must be kept at a high temperature the whole time.
- It’s time to recall the veggie out of the boiling water when the timer dings.
Steam Blanching
The second way to blanch veggies is steam blanching. Submerging veggies in water isn’t the same. Instead, you let the steam do its job while the product is kept out of the water.
Steaming is not advised for all vegetables, but it may be a good option for some, such as:
- Broccoli
- Pumpkin
- Sweet potatoes
- Winter squash
- Asparagus
- Beans
- Carrots
- Peas
- Chard
It takes longer to blanch in steam than it does in water. It’s usually 1.5 times the recommended water blanching period.
The easy process of steam blanching is as follows:
- At least 3 inches above the bottom of the pot, you’ll need to use a pot with a tight lid and a basket to hold the food.
- Bring the pot to a rolling boil by adding an inch or two of water.
- To ensure that the steam reaches all sides of the veggies, put them in a basket in a single layer. Cover the pot with the basket and place it in there.
- As you notice steam coming out of the lid, keep the heat on high and start your clock.
What About Microwave Blanching
You might get recommendations to use a microwave blanch instead of steam or water blanching from certain websites.
Is it, however, a viable or safe option?
Microwave blanching is a popular technique that is considered safe, but it isn’t helpful and isn’t effective. Enzymes aren’t stopped by the microwave, which may result in flavor loss, texture deterioration, and color fade.
You may end up with veggies of lesser quality if you choose to utilize the microwave, and you’ll need to work in much smaller batches. That causes you to spend more time blanching your veggies.
When blanching veggies on the stovetop, keep a close eye on them.
Always Cool Down
The next phase is always the same – cooling down, whether you use water or steam to blanche your foods.
The vegetables must be cooled quickly once the timer has completed to halt the cooking procedure. You must put the basket and all into a big sink or pot full of cold water to wash off the vegetables. The temperature must be less than 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
You’ll have to exchange the water every few days or so. Another option is to toss the veggies in boiling water. The blanching process and the cooling process are usually completed at the same time.
Do You Have to Add Salt When Blanching?
Salt should be added to your blanching water, even if you’re hesitant about it. The water should be extremely salty, in reality.
Why?
- Since saltwater weighs more, it has more buoyancy when you go to the beach. That indicates that the exterior of your meal is weighted than the interior. It helps to retain nutrients in the food by preventing them from escaping.
- Your green veggies stay fresher longer thanks to salty water!
- Because the cooking process is fast, the food does not have enough time to absorb as much salt, so you need extra salt to flavor.
How to Blanch Tomatoes and Peaches
Tomatoes and peaches are two of the most popular items to blanch. For the same reason, you should blanch them: their skins come off much more easily when they are blanched.
You don’t want to spend a long time peeling your produce if you’re processing a huge quantity of fresh tomato sauce or canning diced peaches. Blanching makes your life a lot easier.
Here is what you must accomplish.
- On the bottom of each tomato or peach, cut a shallow X. A sharp paring knife can help you with this. You simply want to assist the skin split during blanching, ultimately making it simple to fall asleep. Don’t cut too deeply.
- Boil batches of 4-6 tomatoes or peaches in water for 10 minutes.
- Using a slotted spoon, remove the fruits from the boiling water after 30-60 seconds.
- Place them in a bowl of ice water as soon as possible. Remove from the ice bath and let sit on a paper towel to drain once cooled.
- The next step is to peel the tomatoes or peaches. It should peel away easily because you added the X at the bottom.
Recommended Blanching Times
For a complete overview of blanching times, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
The most common vegetables for blanching are given below.
Give Blanching a Try!
All gardeners and home cooks should learn how to blanch fresh veggies. Blanching vegetables helps you preserve your fresh fruits by minimising their loss of nutrients, flavor, color, or texture when you freeze them at peak freshness.