Knowledge Base > Char Nolan - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Char Nolan - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, January 23, 2024 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Char Nolan in her virtual office as she welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to ask anything – from cooking techniques to cou… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

After blanching vegetables and shocking them in an ice bath, how do you suggest bringing them back up to serving temperature while maintaining their vibrancy?

— Maria Palacios

Answer:

So one thing to think about is, uh, when you go out to eat, generally speaking, uh, the vegetables, uh, on that platter, if you've ordered something with, uh, broccoli, the broccoli looks so bright and green because re restaurants generally blanch, there are vegetables, uh, they don't cook them like my mother did, to release all of the chlorophyll so that the broccoli would turn gray. So, um, to bring it back up to heat, you can do a couple of things. And remember that blanching is the ideal vegetable for making acru de tea platter or whatever. It kind of takes a little bit of the bite off, but still has that beautiful color. You can saute them, you can steam them, you can microwave them, you can roast them. You wanna have a proper oven temperature. And really, if you saute them, for example, they only need one to two minutes in a pan, and they will be warm and they will be ready for service, and they won't lose that bright green color. So a lot of people, uh, with that, uh, blanching assignment will then freeze their vegetables. So you want them to thaw a little bit and then cook them as you would. So, uh, I know many students will write in their assignments that they have a lot of leftover broccoli. So, uh, everybody becomes a, an a broccoli expert from what I like to call the broccoli lab.
Char Nolan

Char Nolan

Chef Instructor

@char_nolan