Food

How to Cook Asparagus – 5 Simple but Effective Ways!

Are you casting asparagus on my cooking?
– Curly Howard

This phrase basically means “Are you criticizing my cooking?”.

This is an example of English humor.

How to Cook Asparagus?

Asparagus is a green Veggie which is also known as Kurilo (कुरीलो) or Satawari (शतावरी) in Nepali. Its taste is often compared to that of broccoli and it is one of the best veggies for us.

Why do we say that? This simple-looking vegetable is filled with Nutrients including Vitamin A, C, and K along with lots of Fibers and Folate.

On top of this, the veggie is very low in calories. But that being said, regardless of how healthy a vegetable is, one should not eat it raw. While you can technically eat an asparagus raw and its latest fine, we have to know that cooking was invented for a reason i.e making food easier to digest. On top of that, fibers are one of the hardest nutrients to break down and this thing is chock-full of fibers.

That brings out the question – How to cook asparagus so that we get the best of both the taste and health from it?

5 Simple Ways to Cook Asparagus

As with a lot of foods, there is no one specific way to cook asparagus. In fact, there are very few foods that have only one correct way to cook them and asparagus is not one of them. The following are the 5 best ways to cook asparagus to bring out the best of taste and health from this simple but healthy Veggie.

Blanching

This method is the little brother of boiling. While you boil food, you put the whole food in water and boil it along with the water, to cook asparagus via blanching you skip the first part. For this process you need to:

Boil the Water
Tie the asparagus into little bundles
Drop the bundles of asparagus in the boiling water for a few Minutes
Take them out and drain them

Steaming

This is one of the simplest methods to cook asparagus. It is a bit troublesome to find the steamer as not all of us have it but you lose fewer nutrients through this method. To steam asparagus you would need to:

Put the asparagus in a steamer
Put some water in the lower compartment
Steam for 3-5 minutes

Grilled

This is one of the oldest methods of cooking. To cook asparagus using this method all you need to do is find a pan and heat it. The complete process of cooking asparagus via the grilling method is:

Heat a pan
Oil it lightly
Put the asparagus and stir it occasionally

While you can use this method to cook asparagus without the oil, a little bit of oil or butter is recommended to help the asparagus unstick from the pan. You can skip the oil while using a non-stick pan.

Open-Fire Roasting

Similar to grilling, roasting is one of the oldest and simplest methods to cook. In this cooking method, you don’t even need a utensil. To cook asparagus through this method you need to:

Skew asparagus with a stick or steel skew
Light a fire
Put the skewed asparagus in on top of the flames

Be sure to check the asparagus every now and then to prevent it from being burnt. This method of cooking is quick and will give the vegetable a smoky flavor as well.

Stir-Fried

Stir-frying is a bit of a complicated process. But if you cook asparagus through this method you will get a lot of room to work with the flavors and seasonings. To cook the asparagus using this method you will need to:

Heat up a pan
Heat up some oil
Put in the asparagus
Cook for 4-5 minutes while stirring

Now while these methods are some of the methods to cook asparagus solo, it should also be noted that asparagus is usually consumed with other vegetables. Due to this, among these, the most popular method to cook asparagus is “stir-frying” as this method is simple as well as a versatile one. Along with this, you can also use this method to cook along with other vegetables as well.

So,

The gist is that you can use any number of methods to cook asparagus but at the same time, asparagus are not things to be consumed alone. Along with this, while eating asparagus is still a valid option, it is recommended to cook it before eating it as raw asparagus may contain microbes that can be harmful to you.

Hope this was helpful for you. If you have any suggestions for us, do let us known them down in the comments below. And as always, thank you for reading till the end.

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