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You are in: Home --> Cooking Tips
Cooking Tips for Vegetables
Jump to Tips on: Vegetables
Always try to prepare your ingredients and do all of the chopping before you start cooking! It makes life much easier in the kitchen.
Onions The easiest way to finely chop an onion:
When choosing which onion to buy, remember that Red onions are sweeter than white onions and shallots are slightly more bitter with a stronger taste which is more distinctive than normal onions.
Potatoes To get the best mashed potato, instead of peeling and boiling them, which allows them to absorb water and dilute the taste, try baking them whole in an oven with the skins on, then cut them in quarters and remove the potato from the middle. This provides a dry potato that can be mashed and is full of flavour.
When boiling potatoes, you can tell if they are cooked if you can pierce the potato with a sharp knife, lift it clear of the water and it slides off the knife.
The best varieties of potato for making chips or for roasting are 'Arran Victory' or 'Maris Piper'. These provide a crispy outside with a fluffy inside due to the balance of water and starch contained within them. The waxier varieties are best used in salads or simply boiled. Click here for tips on roasting potatoes.
When making French fries, wash the chips in water and dry out on a cloth before cooking, this removes starch that would otherwise make them stick together. The oil should be at 180°C to 190°C and once the fries go into the oil, it is important to move them around at the beginning of the cooking process to ensure that any residual starch does not make them stick together.
If making potato gnocchi, do not allow the potato to cool before making them, otherwise they become tough. Also, try adding a little ricotta cheese into the potato to add an additional flavour.
With new potatoes, most of the taste is in the skin, so don't peel them.
Garlic To remove the smell of garlic after touching it, rub a little lemon juice into your fingers.
The easiest way to peel the skin off a garlic clove is to microwave it for 8 seconds before peeling.
If you find a green shoot in the middle of a garlic clove, then you should remove it because it gives a bitter taste.
Grating garlic is a great way to get a 'finely chopped' consistency.
Other Vegetables When choosing a butternut squash, go for the one with the longest neck, because that is where the flesh is, the bulbous base is where all of the seeds are.
The seeds of a butternut squash can be roasted and eaten as a snack.
To quickly ripen an avocado, place in a brown paper bag with a potato and leave in the dark.
To remove the skin from a bell pepper, use a blow-torch to burn the skin then peel away.
To help keep the vivid colour of greens when boiling, like runner beans, sprouts and broccoli, use a little salt in the water. Bring the water up to the boil before putting the vegetables into the pan, otherwise you lose some colour and flavour. If blanching vegetables, plunging into iced water afterwards will help to retain the colour.
Beetroot leaves should not be discarded, they make for a very tasty and nutritional green to add to a meal.
Delicate greens or salads should be stored in a fridge, however most other vegetables like carrots, celery, potatoes, onions etc. can be stored in a cool dark airy place elsewhere (like the garage).
If peeling root vegetables with 'knobbly' bits, like ginger root or Jerusalem artichoke, use a knife to remove the rough knobs before starting with the peeler, this makes it much easier and quicker.
If boiling whole beetroots to soften them, always cut the storks long (5 inches) so that you reduce the bleeding of the juices into the water.
To remove the stains from your fingers after handling red beetroot, use lemon juice.
When boiling artichokes, make sure you use plenty of lemon juice in the water to stop them turning black during cooking.
The next time you are boiling carrots try adding a little sugar and cinnamon bark into the water to add an extra dimension to the flavour.
When using celery branches, use a peeler to remove the rough spiny ridges from the back of the stork.
If cutting broccoli florets off for serving as a green or in a stir fry, save the branches to use in a soup!
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