How to Boil Broccoli

Broccoli florets cooked briefly in salted water until just tender, then drained. This is a technique page rather than a dish, and no country is claimed for it. The only thing that matters here is timing, and the margin is narrow. Three to five minutes gives you florets that are bright green and tender with some resistance left. Much beyond that and the chlorophyll degrades, the colour shifts from green towards olive and then yellow-brown, the texture collapses, and the sulphur compounds that give overcooked brassicas their smell are released in quantity. Small florets sit at the short end of that range and large ones at the long end, which is why cutting them to an even size is worth the extra thirty seconds. Draining immediately is half the technique. Broccoli left sitting in hot water carries on cooking, and so does broccoli left in a covered colander. If you are not serving it straight away, plunging it into iced water stops the process outright and holds the colour. The source's nutritional claims, that boiling preserves vitamins better than other methods, have not been carried across. Boiling in fact leaches water-soluble vitamins into the cooking water, which is the opposite of what it says.