Thomas Keller on Blanching Green Beans

Watch as Chef Thomas Keller demonstrates Big Pot Blanching Green Beans.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Blanching
• Green Beans
• Thomas Keller
• Viking
• The French Laundry

[Antiks72]

@ty2 a calm, cool professional instead of a screaming maniac.

[kostyakulshin]

Спасибо !!!!

[ty2]

This man is what I someday hope to be. I think he is an amazing chef of course, but also he is an amazing mentor and a human being. He is never too big to teach anyone to do anything. He is never to big to teach blanch green beans. He could scoff at the idea of just green beans, but it is important to be able to do correctly. He loves the food and the people he works with. I wish I could apprentice with him.

[dahwugui]

@paucceri Coz i know keller works with the likes of Herve This and Harold McGee, both are chemists/physicists(whichever I don't really know), and they are the starting forefathers publicly when it comes to food science. Both actually touch on the topics of salt. Salt itself is the single most important ingredient in cooking. I can safely say if salt is taken away from the existence of Mankind, we will be in a dark era of tasteless food.

[paucceri]

@dahwugui Yeah, i dont think any debate concerning boiling water and green beans could be anything but for fun :D And I think we're pretty similar, i nit-pick too whenever the opportunity arises. I do agree that if you're boiling your beans for maybe ~4 minutes, there will be no discernable difference whether the water is 100 C or 101 C. But pretty much everything asking to be boiled - pasta, broccoli, beans - improves markedly in flavour when you boil it in water which is unpalatable in itself.

[dahwugui]

@paucceri As we are talking about cooking the beans for consumption rather that a science experiment to prove that an addition of salt will result in significant result in improving cooking of the beans, its almost non-essential to even mention that adding the limited salt(for palatable reasons) will really observe a viable difference to the timing in cooking the beans.

:D Cheers. just a debate for fun.

[dahwugui]

@paucceri Ok. Point taken. I know now we are just nit-pickin' and I do admit I nit-pick when it comes to technicality in food, as I know for a fact for the boiling point of water to reach 110 degrees C, it will require alot of impurities in the water. As I stated, a ratio of salt to water 1:4 will only result in a increase of 5 degrees C, therefore, for a jump to 110 degrees will result in more than a ratio of 1:2 salt:water as the increase is not linear.

[paucceri]

@dahwugui But, it wasn't a claim:

"...meaning when you reach full boil, the temperature could be around 110 C, for example."

Notice the two disclaimers "could be" and "for example". I wasn't stating it as a fact. It was conjecting. Also, it's incorrect to use the term "insignificance" when talking about such issues - strictly speaking, "insignificance" relates to whether there is an causal effect or not. In this case, there is no denying there is an effect - the effect is just diminutive.

[dahwugui]

@paucceri False claim = 110 degree C. I am sorry. I am a person that is pretty precise when it comes to topics of cooking temperatures. Anyway the increase in temperatures after addition of salt contributes insignificant lesser cooking timing. The cooking error margin when it comes to french beans is pretty forgiving. I cook mine from 4 - 4.5 minutes. Depends on the variety and size of the haricot vert as well.

[paucceri]

@dahwugui Where exactly did I make a false claim´? I said the water boils at a temp above 100 C (which is true), and that thence the beans dont need to boil for as long as they would in 100 C water (which is also true). Obviously the main purpose is indeed to season the beans as they cook.