Poor Misunderstood Broccoli

Orecchiete with BroccoliOh broccoli, that most maligned of dinnertime vegetables!  No less an authority than George HW Bush has publicly slammed broccoli, and officially banned it from Air Force One.  The New York Times has an article attempting to coax its readers into giving it another try.  

You know you should eat it.  We all know that broccoli is ridiculously healthy.  As a dark green vegetable, it is packed full of vitamin C, fiber, potassium, iron, and all those oddball phytochemicals and micronutrients.  It's practically the perfect food!  

And yet.

In my experience, people have two problems with broccoli.  And both of them are related to improper and careless handling and cooking.

Problem One: Bitter taste.  Broccoli can be very bitter indeed, particularly if it is overcooked, or seasoned weirdly.  My own mother, wretched cook that she was, used to steam broccoli half to death and then add red wine vinegar - and red wine vinegar alone.  

Trust me when I tell you, red wine vinegar actually makes broccoli taste worse.  The acidity of the vinegar only serves to highlight broccoli's bitter under-taste.

So very "not yum."

Problem Two: Bad texture.  Today's frozen broccoli is not too bad, but remember that it's halfway "cooked" already.  The freezing process will rupture cells and tend to make the end result a little mushy.  If you're cooking frozen broccoli, all you really need to do is gently heat it.

Please do not follow my mother's habit of dropping a brick of frozen broccoli into a vegetable steamer and cooking it until it drapes limply across the fork like a swooning Victorian woman.  Aside from removing most of the nutrients in broccoli, this is completely disgusting.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the texture of raw broccoli.  I can sort of appreciate the texture now, as an adult.  But only "sort of."  Raw broccoli has a crunch which is nice, but it also has a weird squeak to it, like the feel of corn starch.  I do not like this texture now, and I despised it as a child.

If you are new to the cooking of broccoli, try just roasting some on the stove top with a bit of oil over medium heat.  This way you can see the progression in colors.  Raw broccoli starts out a kind of dull color, and then it turns a vivid green - this is when it is best to eat.  Past that it starts going an unappealing yellowish pea-green shade.  That's the danger territory.

My favorite way to cook broccoli is in a stir fry.  Just slice it up into small heads and toss in a hot pan with some oil.  Add onions, garlic, bean sprouts, and all your other favorite stir fry items.  The broccoli will get a little bit roasty at the ends, and have just the right balance of crunch and gentleness.

Broccoli roasts up well in the oven, too.  Toss with olive oil and salt, add in anything else you want to roast (potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage) and bake at 350 for about an hour.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user su-lin