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| Colorful vegetables require different cooking methods: Green: Quickly lose their color when cooked. Heat releases acids that combine with chlorophyll, causing them to release their color and turn brown. Yellow and orange: Carotene, the provitamin that converts to Vitamin A, is not soluble in water, is stable when heated, and unaltered by addition of acid. Red and purple: Adding an acid during cooking enhances the color of the pigment anthocyanin. White: Adding an acid during cooking enhances the pigment called anthoxanthine. Adding an alkaline ingredient, over cooking, and contact with iron and aluminum causes them to turn yellow or brown. |
| The most abused method for cooking vegetables is boiling. For optimum results in preservation of nutrients and color, use a small amount of water to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pan, reserve the liquid (contains vitamins and minerals) to use in other recipes or drink as a cool beverage (add a little of seasoning to taste). First bring the water to a boil (thus neutralizing the enzymes that destroy their vitamins), then add the vegetables and lower the heat to simmer (maintains 2120 F.) once boiling resumes. For green vegetables, cook without a lid to preserve the color (so that cholorophyll-destroying acids do not accumulate); all others should be covered to shorten time and prevent loss through evaporation of nutrients. |
| What does the addition of baking soda do to the vegetables?
Positive effects: Helps to retain the color in green vegetables. Negative effects: In green vegetables it causes softening of the cells and alters flavor, destroys thiamine. It changes red vegetables to purple, blue, or green; turns white vegetables yellow; it hastens the loss of Vitamin C |
| What does the addition of acid do to the vegetables? Positive effects: Maintains firmness and color of red and white vegetables. Negative effects: Turns green vegetables an unappetizing green. It is unnecessary for yellow vegetables-their color is stable. |
| What does adding salt do to the vegetables? Softens them by extracting water from their cells. When added to the boiling water at the beginning of the cooking cycle, it tends to drain nutrients from the vegetables cells into the cooking water, then when they are drained at the conclusion, much of the intended benefit of vegetable nutrition is lost. When cooking for a long period of time, the salt becomes concentrated in the vegetable cells. Vegetables with a high water content (mushrooms, cucumbers, tomatoes) should not be cooked with salt; red cabbage and peppers will lose their flavor and firmness. |
| Ideal cooking methods Steaming: Suspending vegetables in a single layer over the cooking water in a double-boiler type utensil or an electronic steamer pot, especially for fragile kinds such as cauliflower and asparagus, is ideal. It may take slightly longer, but the benefits are worth the wait. Pressure cooking: Vegetables will cook very rapidly (thus careful attention to the timing of the procedure) in this hermetically-sealed cooker because the heat is raised above the boiling point and the steam is contained under pressure. Saves time and energy. Stewing: The best method for squash, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions,
and shallots. |