Your Asparagus Will Dry Out While Cooking Unless You Do This

Asparagus is a delicious but notoriously tough vegetable — we chop off the worst bits, but even the tips require a significant amount of time to cook. With methods like grilling, sautéing, and frying, prolonged contact with such hot surfaces can begin to dry the asparagus out before it's done cooking, leading to a disappointing result.

According to the food blog This Silly Girl's Kitchen, the solution is to blanche the asparagus beforehand. Blanching is a classic method of cooking green vegetables which involves submerging them in a pot of boiling salted water for just a couple of minutes. Afterward, you drop them into a bowl of ice water to halt the cooking process. This also preserves the vibrant green color of the vegetables, since we stop the cooking before the green chloroplasts (the element of the plant's cells responsible for photosynthesis) start leaking out into the water. Adding plenty of salt to the water also plays a special role — it seasons the vegetables and prevents nutrients from seeping out too quickly.

Blanching helps us here because it cooks the asparagus halfway through, so you can grill, roast, sauté, or air fry it just until the outside looks good and not have to worry about the inside being undercooked. The blanching technique is also great for solving the big issue with cooking thin asparagus, which can end up getting mushy and overcooked when you grill or fry it. Because it's so thin, the inside can cook through (and then some) before you've even managed to get a nice sear on the outside.

To blanche asparagus, you need a pot big enough to fit your trimmed stalks and plenty of water (about eight cups). Add around two tablespoons of salt to the water and bring it to a boil.

Next, add the asparagus to the boiling water. The cooking time will depend on how thick your asparagus is — medium thickness takes three to four minutes, but you might want to do a minute less for thinner stalks and a minute more for thicker stalks.

Once the timer buzzes, remove the asparagus from the pot and submerge it in ice water for a few minutes, then drain the asparagus and pat it dry. You might add further seasoning at this point, but remember to use less salt, since the water was already salted. If you're wondering what kind of fat to use, Gordon Ramsay's asparagus recipe unlocks its full potential by using both olive oil and butter.

When you grill or air fry your asparagus, make sure to adjust the time. The first time you try this method, cook the asparagus for around half the time you normally would, and then give it a quick taste test to check the doneness. If it needs a little longer, cook for an extra minute and taste again. Once it's done, take note of the cooking time so you can skip the trial and error going forward. If you're still having problems, there are plenty of other mistakes you could be making with your asparagus, so make sure to read up.