With just a little effort, a bowl, and some ice, you can guarantee that many vegetables will be perfectly done and beautifully colored. The technique is called shocking, because after a brief boil (often called parboiling), you “shock” the vegetables by immediately plunging them into a bath of ice water. The idea is to cook the vegetables just enough to tenderize them, then rapidly stop the cooking process.
Shocking works brilliantly for most green vegetables, like asparagus and green beans, and also for carrots, cauliflower, turnips, and many others. And it’s a fine method when you’re cooking vegetables for a crowd, leaving only a quick warming in butter or oil for the last minute (see Precooked Vegetables in Butter or Oil ).
It’s also the best way to prepare multiple vegetables of differing cooking times for stir-fries, salads, or other dishes where some lingering crispness is desirable. And shocking cooked greens-spinach, kale, escarole, and the like-gives you both vivid color and the opportunity to squeeze out extra moisture.
Here’s what to do: Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and salt it well. Set up a large bowl of water with lots of ice cubes. Drop the vegetable into the boiling water. After about 30 seconds (shorter for spinach, longer for most other things; of course the size of your pieces will affect matters greatly), start testing-you can poke with a thin bladed knife, or taste; you’re looking for the vegetable to be just about tender, but not quite.
When that happens, immediately fish the vegetables out with a large strainer, tongs, or a slotted spoon and put them in the bowl of ice water for a minute or two. When they’ve cooled down, remove from the ice bath and drain in a colander. (You can shock small amounts of boiled vegetables under or in a bowl of cold tap water, which will slow but not dramatically halt cooking. This works best, of course, if your tap water is really cold, which is not always the case.)
Squeeze drained greens tightly to remove as much water as possible, then chop, slice, or cook according to the recipe. Work in batches if you’re shocking more than one type of vegetable, simply moving them through the process until you’re done; there’s no need to change the water. (If you are doing a lot of vegetables, the cooking water effectively becomes vegetable stock.)
You can store shocked and drained vegetables-covered tightly and refrigerated-for a day or two before proceeding. Or use them immediately.
Tags: cooking vegetables, drained vegetables, ice bath, Shocking Vegetables