For best flavor, appearance and least nutrient loss cook vegetables as quickly as possible. The quickest-cooking methods present us with most tasty vegetables-blanching, stir-frying, deep-frying, grilling and broiling. But the slow-cooking oven roasting also brings out full flavors.
When you want to cook several kinds of vegetables together irrespective of what method you use, you have two choices to arrive at vegetables with the same degree of tenderness. Either add them to the pot or pan at different times, starting with the slowest-cooking, densest vegetables then gradually adding the faster-cooking ones, or cut them into different sizes-the slow-cooking vegetables into smaller pieces than the fast-cooking ones.
You may also combine two cooking methods. For example, pre-blanching vegetables significantly speeds up grilling, broiling or sautéing. Blanching is also an efficient way of preparing vegetables to fast last-minute serving, the way restaurant chefs serve freshly-cooked crisp vegetables in the shortest time.
The chef has the supply of pre-blanched, cooled vegetables ready to sauté on high heat in butter or oil and seasonings in less than a minute. Efficient home cooks do the same.
When cooking strong-flavored vegetables, such as those in the cabbage and onion families, the flavor becomes milder if you cook it in water to cover. The strong flavor components leach into the liquid.
They also become milder if you leave your pot uncovered so some of the strong volatiles spread their aromas throughout your house, leaving their vegetable source behind. Due to chemical reactions, prolonged cooking increases the strong flavor of cabbage-family vegetables, but decreases the onion-family vegetables.
A useful way of concentrating flavor in some high-moisture vegetables is a technique the French call dégorger. The idea is to get rid of part of the water without heat. You grate or finely dice the vegetables (cucumber, zucchini, cabbage) to increase the surface area and sprinkle it generously with salt.
After several hours the salt draws out some of the water that you drain in a colander or you wrap the vegetables in a kitchen towel and squeeze out the water by twisting the towel. After thoroughly rinsing out the excess salt, the vegetables are ready to sauté, stir-fry, bake or whatever method is suitable.
Useful Tips to remember :
¨ Use yellow onion in cooking, sweet onion for salads
¨ The flatter the onion the less the pungency
¨ For most intense garlic flavor add garlic late to the sauté pan or dishes
¨ Cooking ginger in water or oil mutes pungency; cooking in acidic liquid increases it
¨ Keep extra minced garlic and ginger in small containers in your freezer
¨ To ripen tomatoes, keep them out of the sun in a warm place in a closed paper bag
¨ Canned tomatoes are better for cooking than tomatoes out-of-season
¨ Chili powder is a spice mix; ground or powdered chili is pure red chili ground into fine
powder
¨ Keep ground chili and paprika in the freezer for best flavor
¨ To tame chili-induced fire in your mouth, get rid of chili oil with alcohol or milk products, or
soak it up with bread or tortilla; avoid water
¨ The ribs in the chili carry most pungency; the amount you include defines how hot your dish
will be
¨ Mushrooms add flavor and texture to dishes; some are bland but soak up flavorful liquids
¨ Heating creates the flavor in mushroom; raw mushrooms are pretty but flavorless
¨ Store mushrooms in paper bags in refrigerator, never in plastic
¨ Cook vegetables with three goals in mind: best flavor, most nutrients, most eye appeal
¨ Cook all vegetables for shortest time possible, particularly green vegetables to preserve color. Never add any acid or baking soda to the cooking water
¨ One of the best vegetable cooking methods is blanching in plenty of boiling, salted water. Microwave cooking is the least suitable