Lessons > Cooking Vegetables in Water
Lesson Overview
Properly-cooked vegetables are hard to come by. They are either too crunchy or terribly over-cooked. When cooking vegetables, the main objectives are to preserve flavor and color, while achieving the desired texture.
In this lesson, you will learn the basics of vegetable cookery. By understanding the differences between boiling, simmering, blanching and parboiling, you won’t ever have those childhood fears of eating poorly-cooked vegetables again.
Lesson Objectives
At the end of this lesson you'll be able to:
- identify the key steps for preparing to cook vegetables in water
- understand why salt plays an important role
- understand which vegetables should be boiled or simmered
- properly test vegetables for doneness
- understand the difference between blanching and parboiling
- identify when you should blanch or parboil
- know how to cook frozen vegetables
Course Syllabus
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START: Watch Lesson Platform Tour | ||
1. | Cooking Vegetables in Water | 2 mins |
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2. | Complete Your Self Assessment | 2 mins |
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3. | Preparing to Cook Vegetables | 4 mins |
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4. | Boiling & Simmering Vegetables | 20 mins |
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5. | The Potato Experiment | 20 mins |
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6. | Blanching & Parboiling Vegetables | 20 mins |
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7. | Cooking Frozen Vegetables | 2 mins |
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8. | Practice Activities & Recipes | 45 mins |
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9. | Lesson Quiz | 10 mins |
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Finish Line | 2 hrs 5 mins | Total Time |
Prerequisites & Related Lessons
Please consider these additional lessons to support your learning and discovery. Some of these lessons are prerequisites that may help contextualize what you are learning and form a baseline of knowledge and skill. Other lessons are related and may help you explore next steps or dive deeper on a learning topic.
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Students
7,671 students from beginner to advanced have completed this lesson from 76 countries.













































