Blanch It! Now Shock It!

  This week’s class was all about exploring unique cooking techniques with our classmates. Armed with our pre-investigations and a room full of creative minds, we got to work sharing our research findings on various cooking techniques. At the end of the class period each small group presented on a specific type of cooking technique, and each one was fascinating in its own way. While some presented on sous vide, others on pan frying, and some on radiation waves in cooking, there was one group presentation that I found specifically interesting, the blanch and shock group. Relating back to my paper from a few weeks ago on enzymatic browning, I found the process of blanching and shocking to be truly fascinating as it is one of the methods used to prevent or completely stop enzymatic browning from occurring. In the following text I will be exploring the blanch and shock method and its scientific processes.

  The blanching method begins by chopping the vegetables to be cooked into uniform pieces, this ensures even cooking across the board. The vegetables are then placed in a pan of water at a rolling boil. While most recipes would instruct to leave the vegetables in the water for an extended period of time, blanching keeps the vegetables in the water for a very brief amount of time. Once the vegetables have become bright green and just slightly tender, it is time to remove them and move on to the shocking process. The moment the vegetables are removed from the boiling water they must be submerged into ice water to quickly stop the cooking process. Stopping the cooking process early on is crucial to ensuring the color and nutrients stay intact, and the vegetable stays crisp, not soggy.

  The blanching process proves its value beyond just making perfectly cooked veggies, it also “...happens to be an indispensable method before the processing of vegetables and fruits is carried out, because of its several advantages.” (Prakash Pandey 2018 p. 2) This is because of its ability to stop the enzymatic browning process, “One major effect of blanching is to inactivate enzymes.” (Prakash Pandey 2018 p. 2) When vegetables are boiled, the enzymes are released or activated, and are ready to perform their chemical reactions. These reactions could be a host of things, but for the purposes of this article we will refer to enzymatic browning. When the vegetables quickly dive into the ice bath, the enzymes are shut down, and therefore their reactions, such as unwanted browning, cannot take place.

References

Prakash Pandey, O., Kumar Mishra, B., & Misra, A. (2018). Comparative study of green peas

   using with blanching & without blanching techniques. Information Processing in

   Agriculture. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/10.1016/j.inpa.2018.10.002