Title: How to Blanch Foods Like a Professional Chef for Best Results
Headings: How to Blanch Foods
How to Blanch Foods
The Blanching Highlights
Reasons to blanch:
How to blanch:
Blanching Times
Blanch Foods: In Depth
A Note About Salt
How Blanching Makes It Easier to Peel Thin-Skinned Fruits and Vegetables
How Blanching Brightens and Fixes Color
What Is An Ice Bath?
How Blanching Helps You Achieve a Crisp-Tender Texture
How Blanching Foods Helps with Your Mise en Place
How to Blanch Foods to Prepare Foods for Freezing
How and Why to Blanch Foods in Fat

Content: To make it even easier to peel, use a sharp knife to cut an X in the bottoms of the food you are blanching: peaches, nectarines, apricots, tomatoes, cipponlini or pearl onions. Once you have stopped the cooking process in the ice bath, simply use a sharp paring knife to pull up the edges of the skin where you made the X and peel away. How Blanching Brightens and Fixes Color
When we talk about brightening and fixing color, we’re talking about the color green in vegetables like broccoli, spinach, kale, green beans, peas, etc. Have you ever noticed that orange carrots and peppers are bright orange, that red peppers are bright red and that yellow peppers are bright yellow but that green vegetables are a bit dull looking? That’s because, even though the green of the chlorophyll in those plants is there providing the green color, small air pockets cloud the color. A quick plunge into boiling water bursts some outer cell walls allowing the air to escape and letting the true bright green of the chlorophyll shine through. If you’ve boiled green vegetables too long, you know that they turn from a bright, vibrant green to a dull olive green. To prevent this from happening, remove the food you are blanching to an ice bath when it is still bright green. For tender greens like basil or spinach, this can be as little as 30 seconds.