To Boil Vegetables Green
Ingredients
Directions
Dress the vegetables and place them in a large pot of boiling water.
Add coarse sea salt to the water and skim it well.
Boil the vegetables uncovered until they are tender, being careful not to overcook them.
If using hard water, add ¼ teaspoon of carbonate of soda to improve color, but use sparingly.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Green vegetables (in the method)
- The main food; boiling softens their fibres until they are tender enough to eat.
- Carbonate of soda
- An alkali that helps green vegetables keep a brighter color when cooked in hard water.
The step that matters
Boil until just tender. Overcooking breaks down the green chlorophyll pigment and softens the cell walls too far, so the vegetables turn dull and mushy. Check them often and drain once they are tender.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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