Cooking Tips: Eight Essential Tricks for Cooking Vegetables

1. Vegetables should be stir-fried over high heat as quickly as possible to reduce the loss of vitamin C. When stir-fried in oil for three to four minutes, tomatoes retain 94% of their vitamin C, while stir-fried Chinese cabbage for about 15 minutes retains only 57%. To make the stems cook more easily, a little water can be added after quick stir-frying to steam them until done. If stir-frying whole long leaves, you can make shallow cuts at the base.

2. When boiling vegetables, they should be placed in boiling water, not cold water. For example, potatoes boiled in hot water lose about 10% of their vitamin C, whereas those boiled in cold water lose 40%.

Kelp and Potatoes

3. When cooking, use a lid on the pot to prevent water-soluble vitamins from escaping with the steam.

4. It is not advisable to blanch vegetables. Some people blanch them in hot water before stir-frying to remove a bitter taste, then squeeze out the juice and cook them. This causes most of the inorganic salts and vitamins in the vegetables to be lost. If blanching is necessary, the blanching water should be used as much as possible. For example, the water from blanching vegetables for dumplings can be used in the meat filling, which preserves the nutrients and makes the filling more flavorful and juicy.

5. When cooking vegetables, adding a starch like water chestnut flour can thicken the soup, making the food more delicious. Additionally, starch contains glutathione, which helps protect vitamins. When cooking meat dishes, adding a little vinegar after the wine can make the dish more fragrant. For vegetarian dishes like bean sprouts, adding a suitable amount of vinegar improves both the taste and nutrition because vinegar also helps protect vitamins.

6. Wash vegetables before cutting them, and avoid soaking them in water. Cut them into large pieces; the smaller the pieces and the longer the cooking and storage time, the more vitamins and inorganic salts are lost.

7. Vegetables should be cooked and eaten as soon as possible to avoid long periods of keeping them warm or reheating them multiple times.

8. If a pan fire starts accidentally while stir-frying, throwing a handful of salt into the pan can extinguish it.