- Everyone, today, we're gonna talk about
how to grill asparagus.
But before we get into that,
let's talk about how to prepare asparagus.
You probably have seen people say,
"Oh, when you're preparing asparagus,
you just snap it, just snap it in half."
The problem is you actually waste a lot of asparagus
that's completely edible by doing that.
So a couple things you can do.
One is instead of holding it at both ends,
you can snap it towards the bottom
which will actually leave a little bit more
of the asparagus on, but you don't
actually have to do that at all.
You can actually just trim off that white woody area
and if you want, you can take a vegetable peeler
to the ends where it's a little bit tougher,
but there's still a lot of asparagus on there
that if you snap it in half you're actually gonna be
just throwing in the waste can.
So you can just snap it towards the bottom
and you'll feel that woodier part kind of break off.
But I recommend not snapping it
and just cutting the edges off
because you waste a lot less asparagus.
So how do you buy and how do you store asparagus?
Well, when you get asparagus home from the store,
asparagus is best stored like cut flowers.
So basically similarly, just trim off the edges,
put 'em in a glass with some water,
and put it in the fridge.
Now, depending on your fridge and the humidity,
you might have to cover the asparagus
with a plastic bag, but stored that way in the fridge
in a glass of water, the asparagus will actually last
two to three times longer than probably what you're used to
if you just brought home a bunch,
left it in a bag in the crisper drawer.
So I highly recommend storing asparagus that way.
Something to look for when you're buying asparagus
is you want uniformity in color,
but mostly the main thing is you want to make sure
that the skin is not wrinkled in any way.
It should be firm, it should have
a little bit of a bend to it,
and the tips should be really, really taught and tight.
If you see any sort of browning or the tips
opening up at all, you definitely
don't wanna buy that asparagus.
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So you can grill asparagus a couple different ways.
One way, toss the asparagus with some olive oil,
some salt and pepper, even some lemon,
and then lay it across the grates of the grill
so it's perpendicular to the grill, or it's just
gonna fall right through, which you definitely don't want.
And then you can grill the asparagus
for about five minutes on each side
until it has a nice char mark
and just a lovely, lovely way to enjoy the asparagus.
Now I recommend leaving the grill open.
I'm just gonna show you how to grill it
on my little indoor home grill,
which is just a grilling tray from Le Creuset,
but it's basically the same concept.
One thing you wanna make sure when it comes to asparagus,
the thing that's tricky about it,
whether you're grilling it, sauteing it,
whatever is that the major indicator
for when asparagus is done is it starts
to get really bright and green.
And the thing that affects that is
the thickness of the asparagus.
So if you buy a bunch where the spears
are really, really thin, they're gonna cook differently
than the ones that are really, really thick.
So typically, grilling asparagus takes
about five minutes or so on each side
when you're kind of flipping it,
but it really comes down to watching the asparagus,
seeing that it is bright green and charred and tender,
and just kind of keeping an eye on it.
The second way to do it
if you are afraid of the asparagus falling
through the grates, then you can actually
just wrap the asparagus in some aluminum foil,
also with some olive oil, salt and pepper, and lemon
cover it up with aluminum foil, put that on the grill.
You actually can put the lid down for that
and then just cook the asparagus, again,
until it's fork tender and a nice, bright green.
And that's how you grill asparagus.
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