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When taking a blanched food such as broccoli, what can you do to maintain it's bright green pigment when you go to re-heat it just before serving?

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Recorded

This event was on August 13, 2024

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Maria Allen

When taking a blanched food such as broccoli, what can you do to maintain it's bright green pigment when you go to re-heat it just before serving?

Answer

So when you're blanching something like broccoli, you typically do want to give it an ice bath to be able to give that bright green, um, uh, appearance afterward. Now afterward you can just put it right into something like your stir fry or something like that and you just put it in kind of the end to be able to heat it back up kind of quickly and it'll still retain that bright pigment. But the important part is after you've blanched it, put it in the ice bath to be able to retain the flavor or the, uh, well the flavor as well, but also the pigment on it. Well then afterward just put it in towards the end of dish instead of having it like stew in it for hours and hours, you know. Um, and then you'll still have that bright green hue.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.