How to Boil Broccoli

Video Transcript

"I have this little basket with holes. And I what I like about it for cooking broccoli or cooking pasta is when it's done, I lift it up and it's much easier to drain. So I just boiled the water with that in it already. I've got about a pound and a half of, "oops, they're in the floor; it's ten-second rule", I've got a pound and a half of organic broccoli florets and what's great is all the stores now have vegetable pre-cut, pre-washed organic, makes it really, really easy. And I'm just going to pour it into the boiling water and I'm going to keep it boiling. I'm going to stir it and I can see already that it's turning that nice bright green color that I like. And I'm going to keep it in here for two minutes max, one to three, but, I go by how it looks. I want that bright green color and I want it just barely cooked. I love raw fruits and vegetables. I think we don't eat enough of them, I was raw myself for two years but there was a couple of things that I just couldn't digest very well raw, completely raw and broccoli and cauliflower are one of them. So cooking them like this for one or two minutes, I think, is a great compromise between raw and cooked. And you can see, it's starting to already get that pretty bright green color that we like. I do it this way, even when I'm doing Italian food like Broccoli Palermo, this is how I cook it. And it's just so easy because I don't have to use my wok or my skillet. So after about a minute, be careful, I take it off, it needs about one, you can taste, how you like it. You want it, you know, soft enough, that it's not completely crunchy and hard. But, you want it not overcooked, overcooked vegetables are the worst. I used to work at a nursing home and let me tell you, that's all they ever got, and it's very unappetizing. Usually about two minutes is enough and this has been about a minute and a half. If you like it spicy, you can even add red chili flakes to the water actually. I've done that because if people see it on top, sometimes they have a pre-conceived notion about spicy, they're not going to eat it. But you can subtly flavor the water and I actually have done that and not told anybody. So that's about two minutes, I turn my heat off, I let it drain, give it a good shake. I'm just going to put it on my plate and when I'm ready to serve the tofu, I'm going to place the tofu in the middle of this and have the broccoli all the way around and it's going to be really pretty, just like it is in PF Chang, at a fraction of the cost."