In cooking, blanching an ingredient refers to immersing it in boiling water for a few minutes. There are two techniques, depending on the desired result:
- Removing a strong flavor: To do this, submerge the cleaned vegetables in boiling salted water, and after a short while, transfer them to a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process. This is useful for vegetables such as cabbage, green beans, asparagus, carrots, spinach, celery, leeks, squash, Swiss chard…
- To remove some of the starch: in this case, start by submerging the ingredient in question in a pot filled with cold salted water, which you bring to a boil. As soon as it comes to a boil, remove the ingredient without rinsing it. This "cold water start" technique is used for starchy foods or grains such as potatoes, corn, rice, legumes, sweet potatoes, cassava…
Once the ingredient has been blanched in this way, you can cook it as desired.
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