Asparagus: how to prepare them to perfection
If anything screams spring, it’s white asparagus. With salmon, with ham, with egg, well… with what not? But how do you actually prepare them properly? I asked the 2018 asparagus chef: Jan-Chris Krabbendam.
His restaurant, Gasterij Krabbendam, was named best asparagus restaurant of 2018 by the Brabants Asperge Genootschap. So he certainly knows how to prepare that white gold.
Step 1: fresh asparagus
“It starts with fresh asparagus, preferably bought from the farmer or grower.” How can you tell if they’re good? Read that here.
Step 2: peeling
“Most growers have peeling machines nowadays, so you can take them home already peeled, but we prefer to peel them ourselves. It looks just a little neater and you lose less asparagus.”
“We only start peeling after about seven centimetres. That’s easy, because the top part is still all young shoot and doesn’t have a skin yet.”
“We cut off the last two centimetres of the asparagus, but we don’t throw them away. We use them for the soup. You can use the peelings for that too, but I often find them a little bitter, so I prefer to throw those away.”
Step 3: cooking
“We cook the asparagus per five-kilo crate, which leaves about four kilos after trimming. We place them in a shallow oven dish, add three litres of cold water and 40 grams of salt.”
Quick calculation for home cooks: for 500 grams of unpeeled asparagus (400 grams peeled), that comes to 0.3 litres of water and about six grams of salt.
“We place a few sheets of kitchen paper on top of the asparagus (without printing, because the ink runs), which ensures that the asparagus stays completely submerged and cooks evenly all around. If you’re serving them immediately after cooking, I’d let them cook for a maximum of five minutes.”
“We take them off the heat as soon as the water boils, let them steam off and then put them in the cold room until needed. That’s your basic asparagus. No mace, no butter—we serve those separately later.”
Step 4: let loose
“After that, we finish them to order in the combi steamer, or deep-fry, bake or stir-fry them. You can do all sorts of things with them.”
Classic
“I think they’re best served the classic way: Brabant asparagus with boiled ham—that’s juicier than regular ham—egg, butter, parsley and potatoes. Six or seven asparagus per person is enough.”
“Also delicious: heat the asparagus cooking liquid to 90 °C and poach your salmon in it. Add a beautiful whipped hollandaise sauce and, yes, that’s absolutely delicious.”
Frying raw
“You can also skip the boiling and, after peeling, cut the asparagus into equal-sized pieces and stir-fry them in olive oil until tender.”
Deep-frying
“If you want to deep-fry your asparagus, don’t cook them completely, but—as we do—bring the water briefly to a boil and then let them cool. Then pat the asparagus dry, coat them in flour, then in some beaten egg and finally in finely ground prawn crackers. You might not expect it, but it’s really delicious. You get beautifully crisp asparagus with a little of the prawn crackers’ sweetness.”
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