Tip! This cooking technique makes your vegetables and (healthy) snack board even tastier

Whether it’s part of a mega-extensive snack board where you also go all out with fruit and cold cuts, or you simply serve it with a few super-quick fantastic dips: crudités are wonderful. Fresh, healthy, crunchy—you can just feel that you’re doing something right. But did you know there’s a technique that might make your raw vegetables even tastier?

Although officially, they can no longer be called raw vegetables. Still, blanching is the technique that can make the carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli on a snack board just a little more beautiful and delicious. Beyond crudités, briefly blanching your vegetables makes them next level colorful and perfectly crisp yet tender.

What is blanching?

Blanching is a simple technique in which food—especially vegetables—is cooked very briefly and then placed in cold water to stop the cooking process and prevent it from continuing to cook. It brings out the vegetables’ freshest color while preserving their flavor and, in many cases, their texture. It works especially well for firm vegetables that you might otherwise eat as crudités, such as carrots, sugar snap peas, cauliflower, fennel, zucchini, and green asparagus.

How to blanch like a pro

It’s super easy, but it does require a tiny bit of preparation because once you get started, things move quickly.

• Wash or peel the vegetables (where necessary) and cut them into equally sized pieces.
• Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
• Once it’s boiling, salt it as you would pasta water.
• Have a large bowl ready with water and ice cubes, a slotted spoon, and a board or deep plate covered with a clean tea towel.
• Carefully place the vegetables (one type at a time) in the boiling water until their color really pops and they are still crunchy but just slightly less firm than when raw. You’ll need to test a piece after thirty seconds and then every thirty seconds until you reach that perfect point. For most vegetables, this takes between one and a half and three minutes.
• Immediately remove them from the boiling water with a slotted spoon and transfer them to the bowl of ice water.
• As soon as everything has cooled, remove the vegetables from the ice water and place them on the tea towel to drain and pat dry.
• Repeat with the other vegetables.
• Serve immediately on a snack board with delicious dips such as hummus or a thicker mustard vinaigrette, or save them for later by loosely wrapping the vegetables in sturdy, damp paper towels and storing them in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

Also read:

• Are raw vegetables healthier than cooked vegetables?
• 9 yogurt dips from around the world
• This is the vegetable everyone should use to make salads