Basic cooking : How to cook spinach, asparagus and bean sprouts
Cooking vegetables can be simple, but can also easily get messed up! Sometimes they are over cooked and become soggy, sometimes they are still under cooked.
When vegetables are cooked well, they have a nice texture, have any excess bitterness removed, and cooked to bring the natural sweetness out from the veggies.
There are several ways to cook veggies: steam, roast, saute, fry… but today, I’ll show you how to boil them.
I’ll use spinach, asparagus and bean sprouts - 3 popular vegetables you probably often eat and cook. Also, I was able to get them from the grocery store this time ;)
I’ll also introduce some recipes using these 3 vegetables. (Tomorrow’s post)
Let’s get started!
Spinach
The best season for spinach is Winter because cold weather makes spinach taste sweet, but you’ll be able to get it all year around. Baby spinach is good for eating raw like salad or you can saute directly in a pan. If you are using mature spinach, I recommend to boil and squeeze out the excess water to the remove bitterness out from spinach.
Directions
In a large bowl, place spinach and add enough water to cover spinach. Let stand for 10 minutes.
Shake spinach in water gently, change water and rinse off dirt/mud.
Before you start to boil the spinach, prepare ice water in a large bowl.
In a large pot, bring 2 litters of water to boil. Add 1.5 Tablespoons of salt. This amount of salt sounds like a lot but this makes the color of the spinach a very nice, bright, and green, and prevents a watery taste.
Add the spinach stem part only into boiling water for 10 seconds then add all the rest. Cook 1 minute.
Drain water and put spinach into ice water immediately.
Once the spinach cools down, make small bundles and squeeze water out the from top to down. (See the picture above)
On a cutting board, cut into 3-4 pieces and squeeze water out again.
Use for your cooking!
If you want to freeze the spinach, wrap with plastic wrap or zip-lock bag to prevent from drying out. To defrost, microwave frozen spinach for short time.
Asparagus
It is getting near to asparagus season, April-June. I love the sweetness and the nice crisp texture of asparagus but sometimes it becomes soggy. I’ll show you how to boil asparagus step by step.
Cut off the bottom of the asparagus, around 1/2 inch.
Using a peeler, peel the bottom half of the asparagus. When you peel, don’t hold the asparagus with your hand. Place on a chopping board so that it prevents from braking.
If you care about the details, remove the triangle parts on the asparagus with a knife so that you can get a nice texture. (I usually skip this process at home because it’s a lot of work)
In a medium sized pot, bring water to boil (around 2 liters of water) and add 1.5 tablespoons of salt (the same amount of salt). We do this for the same reason as we did for spinach.
Prepare ice water.
Cook asparagus a little less than 1 minute for this size of asparagus in the picture. If it’s thicker, extend the cooking time a bit longer.
Drain water and put asparagus into ice water immediately.
Once it cools down, drain water and pat dry with paper towel.
Bean sprouts
You can get bean sprouts at many of the grocery stores in the Bay area these days. In the cuisine of some South East countries they will eat them raw, but in Japan we usually cook bean sprouts. If you cook bean sprouts long, it’s will be a terrible texture. I’ll show you how to boil bean sprouts while still keepig a nice texture and not too watery taste.
Rinse bean sprouts with water. Drain water with a colander.
In a large pot, add bean sprouts and cover with cold water.
Turn the heat to high, wait until the water starts to boil.
Once the water starts to boil, turn off the heat and drain immediately with the colander.
Let it sit in the colander until the bean sprouts cool down.
I’ll post some recipes for dishes using these vegetables tomorrow!!