- Everyone today we're gonna talk about
the many different ways
that you can actually cook asparagus.
Before I kinda get into that though,
I wanna talk about how to prepare asparagus.
So you probably have seen people say,
oh you can just snap asparagus in half right?
Snap it in half.
The problem is there's actually a lot of edible asparagus
on this leftover part that you've broken off.
So there's a few things you can do.
One, you can actually hold it closer
towards the end of the asparagus and snap there.
You'll get a much smaller piece
and actually leave more of the edible asparagus on.
My method, just trim off the ends.
You can see here there's a little kind of white woody part.
You can sort of feel
where it's a little woody on the asparagus.
Just trim that off with a knife.
By doing so you'll actually waste a lot less asparagus.
And when you're talking about food waste,
where in America we waste 40% of the food that we produce,
it's a really easy way to not throw out
food that you paid for.
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After you've prepped the asparagus,
how do you actually cook it?
One way to cook the asparagus is to go ahead and grill it.
So prep the asparagus,
you can toss it with some olive oil and salt pepper,
and then put it on the grill
so it's perpendicular to the racks.
You don't want the asparagus to fall through.
Leave that lid open and you can grill the asparagus
probably about five minutes on each side
until you get a nice char,
and you have delicious grilled asparagus.
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The next way to do it is to roast it.
Place the asparagus, the prepped asparagus
on a roasting pan,
you can actually just pour the olive oil
and salt pepper on that pan and roll the asparagus around,
to completely season it.
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And then put it in the oven.
Bake it at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes,
until the asparagus is nice in fork tender.
Something to consider
when you're talking about cooking asparagus
is that the spears are often different shapes.
They have a different girth to them.
Some are really thin, some are really thick.
And how long it takes for them to cook,
is dependent upon that.
So something to look for when you're cooking asparagus
is the brightness of it.
As it cooks, it'll kinda go from this sort of olive green,
to really bright, bright green.
And as it's cooking, it gets more tender.
So look for that color.
That's really gonna be a key indicator
whether you're cooking, or grilling,
or boiling, or roasting asparagus.
For steaming asparagus, you just wanna add your steam basket
to a pan with a little bit of water,
so it doesn't go above the basket,
and bring that to a boil.
Add in your chopped asparagus.
You can do whole spears, but it's a little harder.
I would recommend chopping it up beforehand,
cover it, cook it for a few minutes.
Once again just watching it to see the color,
as it gets bright green and tender.
If you're steaming your asparagus,
one thing you might wanna do
depending on how you plan to use it,
if you're gonna eat it immediately, or add it to a salad,
you might wanna take it from the steamer
and put it into an ice bath for just about 30 seconds
to stop it from cooking.
Next you can saute asparagus.
One of the easiest ways to cook it.
Go ahead and chop it up,
just like you did for steaming it,
add it to a saute pan with some sort of oil
or fat like butter,
and just cook it until it gets nice and bright and green.
Once again checking it
depends on the growth of the asparagus.
It should get nice and bright and green,
and just nice and fork tender.
It should only take about five to 10 minutes
if you're sauteing it.
And then lastly the two methods
that are kind of related there,
you can boil your asparagus,
or you can just blanch it.
So if you're boiling the asparagus,
you wanna bring a pot of water to a boil,
add some salt to that pan,
especially if you're using a stainless steel pan,
do not add the salt until the water boils,
then add in your asparagus,
and cook it until it's nice and bright and green,
about five minutes.
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Similar to boiling it, you can blanch the asparagus.
Blanching is great if you wanted to have
a really kind of fresh asparagus for a salad,
or if you plan to freeze it.
Similar to boiling it, bring that water to a boil, salt it,
add the chopped asparagus, boil it for just about a minute,
and then transfer the asparagus to an ice bath
to stop it from cooking,
and then either use it for a salad,
or go ahead and freeze it.
And those are the many different ways
that you can cook asparagus.
I hope you like this video.
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