12/04/2019
DID YOU KNOW 🤔
TIPS & TRIVIA🥕🥔🥦 by none other than MS Holistic Nutritionist Chef Nelda 👏
There’s more to cooking vegetables than tossing them in a pot. Some cook more evenly when heated up gradually, while others should be put directly into boiling water. So when do you use which? This rule is simple to remember:
✔️Vegetables that grow underground (potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips), should start off in cold water.
✔️Vegetables that grow above ground (greens, peas, corn) should be placed into already boiling water.
Starting potatoes in cold water creates more even cooking. Throwing cold potatoes into boiling water gelatinizes the starches at the surface of the potato too fast, which will leave you with a mushy exterior that falls apart and dissolves into the cooking water before the center cooks through. By starting in cold water, the temperature in the potato rises more gently.
This works especially well on starchy root veggies, like potatoes, since the gradual temperature change keeps the outer edges from overcooking and turning mealy.
Cooking the corn, peas, etc. simply entails softening their cell walls to make them more palatable and easier to digest. Because most green vegetables are small and/or thin, this doesn’t take long. So you add those to boiling water. Root vegetables contain a great deal of starch, which needs to be dissolved before they can be eaten. As root vegetables cook, “It takes a while for the heat to pe*****te. Starting root vegetables out in cold water and heating the outside layers gradually allows the cell walls get reinforced and become more resistant to the effects of overcooking.”
Chef Nelda says she cooks in small amounts of water but mostly steams .... ALSO, she steams many vegetables whole to maintain nutrients. Chef Nelda applies the rule by starting in a cold pan to build up the steam or have full steam going before adding veggies.
There is actually more to this regarding breaking down starches ...stay tuned.
As always, In Health
