To Boil Vegetables Green
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare and wash the vegetables thoroughly.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
Cook
Add the vegetables to the boiling water and keep them uncovered.
Boil the vegetables rapidly until they are tender.
If using hard water, add the 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
- Vegetables (in the method)
- Boiling softens their fibres and cell walls until they become tender.
- Water
- Acts as the heat-transfer medium that cooks the vegetables quickly and evenly.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the cooking water so the vegetables are flavoured as they cook.
- Carbonate of soda
- Raises the water's alkalinity, which helps keep green color bright.
The step that matters
Boil the vegetables rapidly and uncovered. Acids released by the vegetables collect under a lid and turn green chlorophyll dull olive. Cooking uncovered lets these acids escape and keeps the color bright. A rapid boil also brings the water back up to temperature quickly after the vegetables are added.
“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.
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.