5 Tips on how to cook broccoli to keep it green

Boiling green vegetables like broccoli is indeed quite tricky. If it's too short, it's still hard and feels raw. If it's too long, the color will turn pale and grayish. Very pretty, the main thing to serve.

Well, so that broccoli can be boiled properly and the color remains green, we have 5 tips that you can practice directly. Check out below!

1. Use plenty of water and boil

The first thing you need to do to boil broccoli is to prepare enough cooking water, about ⅔ pan. This large volume of water will make mature broccoli float. So, you don't need to be afraid broccoli will be overcooked and change color.

Before broccoli is included, you must boil the water in this pan until it boils. Boiling broccoli after boiling water will close the broccoli pores quickly, so the color is not easily changed and the nutrients are not wasted much.



2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt to the cooking water


Just like other green vegetables, broccoli also contains chlorophyll; which gives a beautiful green color to vegetables. To keep this beautiful green color unchanged during boiling, adding salt to the cooking water should not be forgotten. You just add 1 teaspoon of salt for every 250 ml of water. This salt will later function as a deterrent so that chlorophyll does not change color.



3. Don't cover the pan when cooking broccoli

When green vegetables such as broccoli are cooked, chlorophyll will produce carbon dioxide gas. This gas must be allowed to evaporate to prevent chlorophyll from becoming grayish. Therefore, while boiling broccoli, the pan must remain open so that carbon dioxide gas is not trapped inside. In addition to changing color, carbon dioxide gas can also make broccoli give off an unpleasant aroma.

4. Cook until tender, not soft

Boiling vegetables doesn't need to be long. Apart from the fact that the color will turn pale, the nutrients will also decay with water. You only need to cook vegetables until tender. For broccoli, about 5 minutes. Don't get soft because it means it's overcooked. Knowing whether it's soft or not, you can stick a fork into broccoli. If the fork can stab easily, it means broccoli is cooked.

5. Soak in ice water

When the stove has been turned off, it does not mean that the cooking process for broccoli is finished. The heat that is still inside broccoli will continue to do the cooking process. And without realizing it, broccoli has been overcooked and changed color.

This cooking process must be stopped as soon as possible after the stove turns off. The trick, soak the broccoli in a bowl of ice water. This ice water will reduce the temperature of broccoli so the cooking process stops. As a result, broccoli also remains beautiful green and the crisp texture is still awake. If you don't have ice water in your home, broccoli can be soaked in room temperature water. But, it must be boiled. So that there is no bacteria attached to broccoli.


That's 5 tips to boil broccoli so that the color remains beautiful green. It turns out it's quite easy, huh. As long as the five tips above are done correctly, green boiled broccoli will be presented beautifully on your dining table. Good luck!