Cauliflower is a versatile vegetable that can serve as its own dish, and as a side dish. It is perfect for diet and baby food. With this vegetable, you can cook and a variety of dishes for the holiday table.
In any season of the year to purchase it is not difficult. It is better and more profitable to purchase a vegetable according to the season. This will reduce financial costs and the chance that the cabbage is grown in good conditions and does not contain a lot of chemicals is much higher.
Cooking cabbage can be a variety of ways. After reading the article we learn how to properly boil this vegetable, retaining all the beneficial properties and taste.
Vegetable selection rules
For cooking, choose vegetables without dark spots and damage. Cauliflower should be white or with a slight yellowish tinge, elastic, the leaves are not sluggish. The quality of raw materials plays an important role at the exit: a dish of cabbage grown on its own will be as tasty and useful as possible.
How to boil frozen inflorescences?
If frozen food is boiled, take care of the preliminary defrosting. Do not wait for the vegetable to quickly thaw. As soon as the large pieces of ice melt, you can safely start cooking.
How to handle not frozen vegetables?
Before cooking, it is necessary to process the vegetable. For this recommend soaking the head in salted water for five to seven minutes. This procedure is done to eliminate possible small insects. It happens that they are difficult to see in the inflorescences. So do not be lazy and spend extra time on additional processing of cabbage. Thus, the risk of finding unwanted guests in the food will be reduced to zero.
How to choose capacity?
Any deep crockery is suitable for cooking: ladle, pan, cauldron. It all depends on your personal preferences. You can cook cauliflower in the microwave and in the slow cooker. To do this, you need to use special tanks designed for this or that device.
Cooking time after boiling - step-by-step recipe
There are two ways of cooking: lay the disassembled inflorescences in boiling water or initially fill the vegetable with water and bring to a boil. In both cases, there should be enough water so that the entire volume of the product is completely covered with water.
Both are good for cooking. The difference is how long the cooking process takes. By culinary experience cabbage poured with water and brought to a boil, cooked faster. Try both ways and find an option to your liking.
- If you lay a fresh product in the already boiling water, then the next step is to wait for boiling.
- From the moment of boiling should take about 15-20 minutes.
When cooking in another way, as soon as the water boils - reduce the heat and cook for about 7-10 minutes. Do not forget to salt water in which our vegetable will boil.
IMPORTANT: The boiling time of the inflorescences varies depending on the variety and quality of the cabbage. Always check the product's readiness with a fork 3-5 minutes before shutting down, if you are targeting in time.
- How much to cook frozen cauliflower?
- How to cook cauliflower for baby mash for baby food and how long will it take?
Features of bringing the product to readiness in various dishes
For salads
Further it is necessary to decide for what purposes the decoction of inflorescences is planned. If they are intended for salads, then the vegetable should be brought to full readiness. Inflorescences while soft, retained their shape, do not fall apart.
Before frying or baking
When conceiving cooking vegetables in a pan or in an oven, the cabbage needs a little undercooking. This is exactly the case when you need to turn off the fire for 3-5 minutes before the end of cooking. Do not worry about the possible raw and unprepared product. The inflorescences will later undergo another heat treatment. Otherwise, you risk getting a falling apart cabbage porridge.
In the soup
The same situation is with cabbage intended for soups. If the vegetable is almost cooked, it should be added 5-7 minutes before the end of cooking. soup. In the case when cabbage is the main element of the soup, you can cook it in the resulting vegetable broth, without removing the cabbage from the pan. Then the cooking process will be faster than planned.
Preparing cabbage for cooking soup, calculate the tab of the remaining products so that the inflorescences are not boiled soft in the pan. Boiled vegetable will be ready in two or three minutes after boiling the soup. Take this time as a guideline for ordering cauliflower bookmarks.
You can check the readiness of the vegetable with a fork, knife, toothpickas a cook is more convenient. The inflorescence should not fall apart from contact with a fork or knife, soft inside or slightly crunchy, in case the vegetable will undergo further heat treatment.
Cauliflower is a very affordable and tasty product. Thanks to this step-by-step instructions, any cook can properly prepare such a dietary and simple vegetable. Proper heat treatment of any product plays an important role. Let's reveal a little secret - if you want to keep the maximum energy value and cauliflower vitamins, put it in boiling water.
