5 recipes based on blanching

2023. 01. 12.

What is blanching?

Blanching is a kitchen process that professional chefs use regularly. Because in many cases, the secret to preserving the rich aromas and the crunchy texture is this process that takes a few minutes.

Actually, blanching is the process of throwing the raw material into boiling water, leaving it for 2-3 minutes, and then putting it in ice water to cool it down. In this way, the food retains its crispness and vivid color, yet it does not remain completely raw. It is also worth blanching before preservation, because more nutrients remain in the vegetables and fruits.

You can read more about blanching in our previous article. This kitchen operation is also such that after we get to know it and use it once or twice, we somehow start to avoid it. Why? Because we haven't built it into our routine. In the case of many foods, we don't even think of how much healthier and tastier this method would be. That's why we brought you some recipes where blanching lends itself, so it's good to use this trick for dishes like these!

Specific recipes that require blanching

Fresh spinach salad with blanched spinach

Spinach salad is not only healthy, but also exciting in its taste. Especially if you let the spinach leaf really show off its bright green. After all, colors give a salad its soul! That's why we recommend blanching the spinach before preparing the salad. In principle, 2 minutes is enough for the spinach leaves in the hot water bath, but after that the ice water can come right away. And what goes with the blanched spinach? We think it's thinly sliced ​​caramelized onions and boiled eggs. The dressing should be olive oil and a little lemon juice.

But you can even rethink the Caesar salad with blanched spinach. After all, the same simple recipe can also work if you toss the salad with diced chicken breast, maybe bacon, caesar dressing and toasted bread cubes. A little parmesan can also be added to this.

Green pea risotto

Blanch the green peas when making the risotto. 2 minutes in hot water is also enough for this vegetable.

And the risotto itself is made with lots and lots of butter! First, we melt it and saute red onion on it. Then add the risotto rice. With constant stirring, dilute with stock, white wine, and you can even add butter. After the spices, slowly comes the blanched green peas, which should only be cooked together with the risotto for a short time.

Vegetable lasagna

There are many types of lasagna. The classic is made by alternating two different layers. A layer with tomato sauce and a white one made with bechamel sauce alternate between the pasta sheets. In the case of vegetable lasagna, the delicate blanched vegetables are added to the béchamel layer. You can add zucchini, eggplant, and mushrooms after straining them into the béchamel layer.

If you want to make the lasagna completely at home, you can stretch and cut the sheets to size with a manual pasta maker. But there are also electric pasta makers.

 

Vegetable pasta salad

This is an extremely healthy version of pasta salad: the pasta is made from chickpeas and use spicy olive oil and lemon juice as a dressing. Your healthy pasta salad will taste divine. More so if you elavate this great dish with blanched vegetables. You can also blanch peas, mushrooms, cauliflower and broccoli for the salad. Since many things go well with the taste of the olive oil dressing, you can decide for yourself what kind of flavor you actually put together. For example, you can complement the salad with pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, or even walnuts. You can even make blanched broccoli, cut into small florets on top of the pasta, hard cheeses with a characteristic flavor and walnuts also go very well with this. But whatever vegetables you choose, you can be sure that you can add parmesan to the final taste of the pasta salad.

You can even blanch for vegetable soup

Make delicious vegetable soup from ingredients rich in flavor. Simply blanch the vegetables before adding them to the soup. Broccoli, kohlrabi, celery. You can even add zucchini to this special soup. After adding a little butter-fried onion and garlic, then the stock, the diced potatoes can be added, and finally the blanched delicacies. Be careful not to cook this soup for too long.

Tip: if you slice the vegetables into small pieces, you should only blanch them for 1.5-2 minutes. Choose a professional slicer, so you can finish the preparation easier and faster.

When can blanching come in handy?

So, as you can see, blanching is almost always helpful when working with vegetables. But there are other cases where this knowledge can come in handy!

When peeling

Did you know that professional chefs also blanch to make peeling easier? For example, in the case of tomatoes, it can be a brilliant solution, since the vegetable preserves its original taste, so you do not harm it. However, it will make your job easier if the skin comes off the tomatoes more easily, for example when making tomato sauce.

Before freezing

It is also worth blanching before vacuuming and/or freezing. After all, we have already mentioned that by blanching, we achieve that the vegetables retain their nutritional content. After all, this method eliminates the function of certain food-degrading enzymes. And this can be effective in the long term, so even when frozen. 

If you are constantly putting a lot of food aside, and you try to manage your ingredients skillfully, then you might want to try vacuum freezing instead of just freezing. Because with this method, food can be preserved much longer in its original state, and in addition, the crunchiness and nutritional content of pre-blanched vegetables is also preserved. For this process, you can find smaller, non-industrial vacuum packaging machines with us, such as this super vacuum packaging machine.

We hope we got you in the mood for vegetables, and of course for their divine preparation, blanching, which can come in handy at other times!