This is The Right Method to Blanch Vegetables | Life-Changingly Amazing

How to Blanch Vegetables & Why ?

Except for green peppers and onions, whose low enzyme content protects them, vegetables to be frozen require preparations that deactivate their enzymes, which otherwise would cause withering. As indicated in the guide on pages 14-15, most vegetables can be prepared in several different ways, but the usual treatment is blanching, which leaves the food as close to its fresh state as possible. For blanching, vegetables should be washed and trimmed as they would be for cooking: Cauliflower should be divided into florets, for instance, and spinach should be stemmed. Separate the tender tips from the denser stalks of such vegetables as asparagus The stalks require longer blanching. 

The blanching method you choose de-pends on the vegetable. Most vegetables—green beans, for example—should be plunged briefly into boiling water. For easy handling, use a colander or wire basket to hold the vegetables.

Delicate vegetables—spinach, asparagus tips and broccoli florets—should be gently steamed over water. The best equipment for this is a steamer with a basket large enough to hold the vegetables in a single layer, thus ensuring that they will cook evenly. 

All blanching is brief and the timing must be precise: Insufficient blanching leaves active enzymes: Prolonged blanching softens the vegetables. When the blanching is complete, plunge the vegetables into ice water to stop the cooking. 

The blanched vegetables are usually dry-packed without added liquid in plastic freezer bags or rigid containers. Many vegetables can be spread on trays to freeze—a process called tray-freezing—then put into containers. Packed this way, the frozen vegetables remain separate, and you can remove whatever quantity you wish. Leaves cannot be kept separate; they are simply sealed in bags. 

All frozen vegetables should be cooked for serving—freezing softens them too much to be used raw. Because thawing would collapse their cells, most vegetables—except corn on the cob, whose kernels would cook before the cob thawed —should be cooked right from the freezer. Plunge them into boiling water and cook them for a third of the normal time.