If one of your goals in the new year is to eat more vegetables, you'll want to make sure they're cooked just right. And several options provide more than just good taste, they provide good nutrition too.
There was a time when Kathleen Moran's veggie cooking technique was stuck in a rut, "I think the way I used to make vegetables, or I thought you had to was just to boil them a lot, and overboil them and then they were soft."
That 'cooked to the bitter end' method is one a lot of people grew up with. "I know from experience that most people have had vegetables that are mushy and they don't taste very good, or they're not identifiable," says registered dietitian Stacey Antine.
Keeping veggies intact is key, so she says, watch for signs of over-cooking, "So for example, if you overcook it and your water is greener than your broccoli, then that's a real problem because now all your vitamins are in the water as opposed to the actual broccoli."
One method, called flash blanching, cooks vegetables in, well, a flash! "You're putting your vegetables in a bowl, taking hot water from a kettle, putting it over the vegetables, letting it sit for two minutes and then draining," says Antine.
Stacey also recommends 'one-pot wonders' where a hot, cooked grain, like rice or quinoa, is used to warm and wilt vegetables, "We're going to fold our spinach into our quinoa. And we're just going to let the quinoa naturally cook the spinach and then all the nuts, the nutrients will actually stay in the pot."
Other tips: if you cook in the microwave, use just enough water to steam. If you boil veggies, save the water for soups or drinks. And if you stir fry, keep the oil under the smoking point. "You want your vegetable on a medium to low heat so that they're cooking, but they're not burning," says Stacey. Remember, overcooking the veggies not only changes the texture and taste of the food, but it reduces the nutritional value of most vegetables.
