Caramelizing veggies bumps up flavor profile
I'm always looking for ways to prepare vegetables that combine easy preparation with flavorful results. First, some history.
Grandmother Mauer believed that boiling vegetables left that vegetable's nutritional benefits in the water and used to say: “If you boil a vegetable, you might as well throw the vegetable in the compost pile and drink the water in which it was cooked.”
Grandma steam-cooked vegetables. Yes, some of those nutrients probably ended up in the steam-producing water. However, because steam is hotter than water, the reduced cooking time left less of those nutrients behind.
Also, Grandma always cooked her vegetables until they were just done. Just. If the vegetable was green, like broccoli, it arrived at the table a v-e-r-y bright green.
The two vegetables Grandma Mauer oven-roasted were potatoes and acorn squash. Today, we can microwave a single potato in about 4 minutes; 10 to 12 times faster than Grandma ever could.
For potatoes, is faster better? Not for me. A microwaved potato has a less fluffy, almost gluey interior and the potato skin is soft. An oven-roasted potato has a fluffier interior and crisp skin. Yummmm.
When I got married, my wife relinquished meal cooking and grocery shopping to me and I always steamed fresh veggies for us, just like Grandma.
Time went by and an increasingly busy schedule led me to frozen vegetables for their easier preparation. I used the least amount of water and cooked my veggies until just done. I felt guilty every time I poured the cooking water down the sink.
Over the last two years, oven-roasting vegetables, even rutabaga, became my go-to preparation choice for simplicity and flavor enhancement. Almost all vegetables have natural sugars in them that, when roasted at 350 to 425 degrees, caramelize at those temperatures.
If you're not familiar with caramelization, hopefully you spotted the word caramel buried in there. Just like making a caramel sauce for a dessert or candy where sugar is heated until it boils and begins to turn a golden brown.
Browning vegetables uses the vegetable's natural sugars to caramelize and bump-up the vegetable's flavor profile.
Last summer when I wanted to oven-roast some green beans, my life partner, Nan, didn't want me to heat-up the whole house just to roast some fresh green beans. So, I came up with a fast cooking, stovetop method for preparing those beans that created a bright-green finish, loads of flavor and no water to throw away: pan steaming/frying.
After washing and then trimming the stem ends of a pound of fresh green beans, I added a tablespoon of flavorful peanut oil to my well-seasoned iron skillet and placed it over medium-high heat. As it heated I swirled the oil around to evenly coat the skillet's bottom.
Next I added the beans and a quarter-cup of bottled water and quickly covered the pan. Shortly, steam started sneaking out around the cover's edge. Four minutes later the steam almost stopped. I uncovered the pan and sautéed the beans in the oil that remained for a couple of minutes until they were bright green and some spots were a golden brown. After seasoning them I placed them on a warm platter and scattered some butter-browned almonds. Done.
How were they? Sensational and my kitchen was imperceptibly hotter. Give my method a try.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.