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Before freezing kale or using it in a salad, you should blanch the vegetable. In this food guide, we’ll show you why this is a good idea and how to do it.
Blanching kale – why bother?
There are several reasons why blanching kale is a good idea. If you grow the vegetable in your own garden or want to use it to prepare delicious recipes, the process can be very useful.
- Blanched kale retains its bright green color. This gives the kale an appetizing appearance.
- Kale is considered a bitter vegetable, even though newer varieties of kale now contain fewer bitter compounds. The bitter substances are produced by the breakdown of enzymes. These can be deactivated by blanching, but this process is not sufficient to eliminate all bitter substances.
- This method also preserves many healthy nutrients, such as vitamins.
- Blanching primarily serves to preserve the color and nutrients of kale and make it more digestible. The taste is influenced by other factors, such as how the vegetable is prepared.
How to blanch kale properly
If you want to freeze kale, you should blanch the vegetables first.
- To do this, first remove the leaves from the stalk and wash them thoroughly under running water.
- Bring salted water to a boil in a pot. Once the salted water is bubbling, add the kale leaves.
- Leave the kale in the boiling water for three to five minutes at most. If you leave the vegetables in the water for longer, the nutrients will be transferred to the water.
- Remove the kale leaves from the water in good time using a slotted spoon and immediately plunge them into a bowl of ice water. Plunging them into ice water interrupts the cooking process, which would otherwise continue due to the heat in the leaves.
- After about two minutes in the ice water, the kale can be drained in a colander. It will dry completely if you spread it out on kitchen towels and pat it dry.
- Now you can cut the kale leaves into pieces and continue processing them or freeze them.
