Week 10 -- Blanch and Parboil

Blanching or parboiling items can help maintain the color, texture, and nutritional value of the item

This skill is especially useful when combining items of varied degrees of toughness, like vegetables, beef, or pork
Blanching is an opportunity to process the ingredient by removing seeds or skins, while also adding more taste with a flavorful liquid
Whether blanching or parboiling, the food undergoes the same process, namely, being plunged briefly into boiling water
Blanched food is shocked in ice water to halt the cooking, a step not needed when parboiling

Concasse: to rough chop any ingredient, usually vegetables, and especially for tomatoes
Tomato concasse is a tomato that has been peeled, seeded, and chopped

With a paring knife, core the tomato stem and score an X on the opposite end
Blanch the tomato in simmering water until the skin starts to separate where you scored the X
Shock the tomato in ice water and peel the skin from the tomato
Halve the tomato, cutting along the equator, remove all seeds
Dice, chop, or puree for your next procedure
Uses for tomato concasse: tomato sauce, soups, salsa, topping salads, canning tomatoes, freeze

Place the pepper on an open flame, or close to an electric broiler element
Char all skin until it is completely black
Shock the pepper in ice water, remove all charred skin
Cut a fillet from the pepper between flesh and pith
Cut the pepper radially, removing the seed cage intact
Uses for Roasted Red Peppers: Use large fillets as pinwheels filled with goat cheese or cream cheese, cut into strips for salad or stir fry, chop for salsa, puree for roasted red peeper sauce, soup, separate fillets with saran wrap and freeze

Cooking Class Notes