Doing What Was Unthinkable: Boiling Vegetables

Doing What Was Unthinkable: Boiling Vegetables

When I was in college, I wrote a food column called “Ask Adele.” In this column, which I co-wrote with a friend, we channeled the spirit of Adele Davis and provided eating advice to fellow college students. Our recommendations frequently involved Brewer’s Yeast and wheat germ. As has been pointed out in the current presidential campaign, we all make mistakes when we’re young.

One of Davis’ many points for cooking and eating right is that boiling vegetables robs these living things of most of their vitamins and minerals.

So for years we pretty much prepared only steamed vegetables. In many cases, I think that steaming enabled us to eat healthier and tastier food. But now I’m starting to see that there are applications where, for reasons of taste and texture, boiling may be best with some foods.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to be in Germany during spargle season, when white asparagus was everywhere.



Some menu boards offered the vegetable with almost every dish.



I ate white asparagus almost every day, and from the first bite I knew: this stuff was not steamed. Boiling softens the vegetable in a way not possible with steaming, and if you boil the vegetable in the right medium, you can add a lot of flavor.



I mentioned this to Susanne Demetrious from the German National Tourist Office, and she confirmed that when she was a girl growing up in Germany, her mother always boiled asparagus with a little butter.

That sounded about right, because each asparagus spear was very juicy and touched with something more than just water.

Last Saturday at the Oak Park Farmer’s Market, I did a quick circuit of the market before deciding that Sandhill Organics had the best looking asparagus, plump and long and variegated in coloration, some green, magenta, almost deep purple. Unlike Germany, Oak Park seems not to offer much in the way of white asparagus.



Getting my asparagus home, I used a vegetable peeler to skin each shaft. Many of the white asparagus spears I ate in Germany seemed to have been skinned, and skinning seems even more important with green asparagus, which has a tougher exterior. Skinning may also promote absorption of water and flavorings.

I brought a small quantity of water to a boil in a shallow frying pan and added about a tablespoon of Nordic Creamery butter. I let the asparagus gently boil for about two minutes and cool for about 20 minutes to firm up a little.

Turned out, this was some of the tastiest asparagus I’d ever made at home. It was moist, and as Brillat-Savarin explains in his seminal Physiology of Taste, without moisture, there is no taste. Boiling adds moisture and helps communicate flavor more effectively.

I may never steam asparagus again.

Most of the asparagus I see here at the markets is fairly young, and generally does not require peeling, in my experience. I just chop off the bottom parts of the stalk that seem woody. The asparagus as served in Central Europe tends to be of the white variety, and is usually grown out to a considerable thickness--at least as thick as a finger, usually moreso. You can see that in the pictures you've posted. I don't think I've ever had white asparagus that was not peeled from about the head down. The exterior is quite tough.

Personally, my favorite cooking method for asparagus is neither steaming nor boiling. (ETA: Just re-read this and realized I meant favorite non-grill/roast method, not favorite method overall.) The microwave is perfect for this application. It cooks the asparagus all the way through (which you've seen to be a problem with steaming), while it retains all the flavor (without any of it being leeched out to boiling.) Just take a bunch, roll it in damp paper towels, and microwave it for about 1.5 -3 minutes or so (depends on wattage of oven, thickness of asparagus, and your preferred level of doneness) It's one of the few things outside of reheating food that I find the microwave perfect for.

While grilling or roasting will always be my favorite preparation of asparagus, if I want that purity of flavor, of the methods of boiling, steaming, and microwaving, I find that microwaving produces the best results.

Binko, microwaving sounds like a good way to cook the asparagus, though I'm also kind of intrigued by seasoning the asparagus with butter in the water (though I can't honestly assess how much the vegetable absorbed the butter; it was perhaps just coated with a thin film of butter).

I've never steamed asparagus. Watched my mom pour boiling water over a skillet of trimmed asparagus (with some salt in the pan too) till it came about 1/2 up the pile of stalks and then add a cover and some heat for 4 min or so. Never considered a different way but now I'll add some butter to the water. Thanks for the tip

Hi,

I prepare asparagus following Julia Child's:

- Cut the bottom inch or so,
- Peel the shaft (yes, I do thin ones, unless they less than chop stick)
- Boil in salted water for five minutes or less,
- I test doneness by lifting asparagus in the middle with a chopstick. It they are stiff and straight, they need to boil more. If they gracefully bow over the chopstick, done.

I am glad that after 40 years of steaming, you have discovered the joys of boiling.

Regards,

Lately, I've been sauteing with a little ginger, then adding oyster sauce... But simple boiled with a little butter (and salt) it's also darn nice.

I've been eating quite a bit of it... my favorite is marinating it in sesame oil and soy and a little brown sugar and oil and then grilling it on the grill. I also microwaved it and it was too done at four minutes. I'd say two min or so should do it. Boiling or steaming would take longer. My mom puts it in a frying pay with water and cooks it for a few minutes too. I like the microwave method as there is no pot to clean only a plate. You can also put butter in there too. You can skin too but I rarely do I just cut off the bottoms. Personally if I was going to be a naughty rabbit, I would just eat the tips and be done with the rest. They are my favorite part. I do not see the fuss with white spargle. To me its all good and I wonder if I could tell the difference if blindfolded.

DH--
Enjoyed your story about the Weißspargel in Germany. Brought back some memories. Back in the day, I fell in love with a German woman, learned Deutsch, and spent a lot of time hanging out with her and her kids. She introduced me to white Spargel, which I'd never tasted before. And then, one time, she took me to the city of Speyer, where the annual Spargelfest takes place. According to the folks in Speyer, white asparagus is the King of Vegetables. Long lines form outside of the restos which are acclaimed as the best of the best in Spargelkuche--and they cook it all sorts of ways, but mostly, they boil it.

White spargel is produced in typical sandy beds, long rows about a meter across. As the spear nears the top of the bed, small cracks appear, and the farmer then mounds more sand over the center of the web of cracks. This goes on for a few days, keeping the spear buried, and thus white--it takes some sunshine to bring the chlorophyll out into the spear, which would turn it green. Finally, when the farmer considers it big enough, he uses a long cutting probe--imagine a dandelion tool, but waaay longer--to make a quick twisting cut in the spear, which he then pulls gently from the sand. It's a laborious process, and really requires some exquisite knowledge and technique to get the harvest timed properly.

Weißspargel is *always* peeled. It's peel is tougher than our green asparagus (because the spears are generally pretty fat), and they also want the various flavorings in the boiling water to enter into the spear, as David notes above. I've peeled my share of spargel in my life, I must say. People think they've been cheated unless they get a pfund each. [In German farmers' markets, the old-style "pfund" --or pound--rounded up to 500g is still used, exactly as "livre" (pound) is still used in French farmers' markets. The kilo is too large, and farmers are conservative, hence the 'pound' will never die! ]


So far as I can tell, the only places in Europe where our sort of green asparagus is eaten are some few regions in Italy. We don't have the skill (yet), nor the demand, to produce white asparagus. Nor does it taste like the green stuff we're used to. But I suspect that this will change.

Anyway David, tnx for the trip down memory lane!

Geo
PS. BTW, you're sure doing a *lot* of travelling lately! Singapore, Deutschland, wherever. Lots of fun following your wanderings!

Geo, thanks for the background on white asparagus growing. Plucking them from the ground sounds like a time-honored hand-skill that it'd be tough to automate. Despite that, prices did not seem astronomical.

Geo wrote:So far as I can tell, the only places in Europe where our sort of green asparagus is eaten are some few regions in Italy. We don't have the skill (yet), nor the demand, to produce white asparagus. Nor does it taste like the green stuff we're used to. But I suspect that this will change.

The only time I had green asparagus was in a soup in Potsdam -- I'm guessing it was used in soup because it was thought unsuitable to serve on a plate.

Switzerland and the UK are also known to use green asparagus regularly. I was able to find it in Hungary, as well, during my years there, but it was a bit more difficult to locate than the white asparagus that seemed to be everywhere. To be honest, I didn't get why people went crazy over the white asparagus. I prefer young, green asparagus myself.

Binko wrote:To be honest, I didn't get why people went crazy over the white asparagus. I prefer young, green asparagus myself.

For me, the attraction was because it was different.

Geo wrote:DH--Enjoyed your story about the Weißspargel in Germany. Brought back some memories.

Same here and same here. I was once in Dϋsseldorf during the white asparagus season (which, I did not know, but see from Wikipedia, in Germany is called Spargelsaison or Spargelzeit; a white asparagus festival is a Spargelfest). Our fetish about the arrival of Copper River salmon has nothing on the craze that comes over European fans of white asparagus during this time. We were out on a Sunday and saw it selling like hotcakes at the farmers' markets, as well as in the restaurants.

As for how it compares to green asparagus, doesn't it have a somewhat milder and/or sweeter flavor?

Good topic. When I lived in Bavaria the spring months brought a seasonal favorite to the local gasthaus: white asparagus with ham and noodles. The noodles were thicker than thick spaghetti, but did not have a hollow center. Asparagus and noodles were boiled, the ham room temp, and the "sauce" was a gravy boat of melted butter. Add a hunk of bauernbrot and a liter of bier and you've got quite a meal.

Katie wrote:As for how it compares to green asparagus, doesn't it have a somewhat milder and/or sweeter flavor?

Yes, milder and sweeter is a good description of it compared with green asparagus. However, it also has a slight bitterness to it that green asparagus lacks. (However, that bitterness is not noticeable if the white asparagus is picked and prepared very fresh.)