How to boil and steam vegetables

✅ The essentials

In boiling salted water or in a steamer, a vegetable cooks in five to fifteen minutes depending on its size, and it is the simplest way to eat some every evening. Steam keeps more taste and vitamins, water is faster to get going. Either way, you stop when the tip of a knife goes in without forcing, and you season afterwards.

🍳 The method

1. Bring a big pot of water to the boil with 10 g of salt per litre, or put two centimetres of water in a pot with a steamer basket.
2. Prepare the vegetables in pieces of the same size, so they cook at the same time.
3. Drop them into the boiling water, no lid for green ones, and start the timer. In the steamer, lid on, count two or three more minutes.
4. Check with the tip of a knife: it should go in without resistance, but the vegetable still holds.
5. Drain. Green vegetables spend a minute in cold water. Then a drizzle of olive oil or a knob of butter, salt, pepper, or a vinaigrette.

📏 The landmarks

• Spinach: two minutes. Peas and broccoli florets: five to six minutes. Green beans: seven to eight minutes.
• Cauliflower florets: eight to ten minutes. Carrot rounds, leek pieces: ten to twelve minutes.
• Medium whole potatoes: twenty to twenty-five minutes. Quartered: fifteen minutes.
• Frozen vegetables go straight into the boiling water, without thawing, with two more minutes.

⏱️ How long it takes

Ten to twenty minutes, half of which the water heats and the vegetables cook by themselves.

🩹 If it goes wrong

Overcooked and soft: as a purée, a soup or a gratin, they will be very good. Not cooked enough: two more minutes, that is all. Grey and bland: they waited in the hot water, next time straight into cold water.

🍽️ Make it tonight

Green beans in vinaigrette, warm, with a finely chopped shallot. Or boiled potatoes for the potato salad.

🥘 The linked base recipe: Green beans in vinaigrette (serves 4)

• 600 g green beans, fresh or frozen
• 1 shallot
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon mustard
• Salt, pepper