I bet you’d never believe me if I told you the picture above is cauliflower that was from a bag.
“steam in a bag” might seem like a great time saver, but when it comes to certain vegetables – steaming just doesn’t do them justice. Cauliflower is one of many. Read more about cauliflower here.
Vegetables can get expensive. Not only that, but you can have a thoughtful plan to cook up some fresh vegetable one night – never get to it – and now it’s rotting in the back of your fridge. Sound familiar?
The solution is to stock up on the frozen veggies when they go for $0.99 or that 2 for $3 deal.
(tip: the steam safe bags are more expensive but who needs ’em when you’re not steaming?!)
Defrost the veggies as you would your meat or poultry. In fact – I take them out at the same time and let them hang out in my fridge for the day. When I am ready to cook them, I make sure to drain off all the excess water; even squeeze them through a paper towel and then proceed as a fresh vegetable.
Roasting them at a high temperature – say a 400F oven or even in a saute pan (if you have a smaller amount) really brings out the nuttiness to the vegetable. Here, I coated them generously in olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika and got my pan screaming hot. I added the florets in and secretly enjoyed the sizzle. I left them alone in the pan so they would get that beautiful color. After all sides were roasted, I tossed in some toasted pine nuts for about 2 minutes and that’s it. A delicious side dish that is cheaper and much tastier than that steam stuff.
[…] didn’t use one years ago, to crisp up these cauliflower – but it would have made my job so much […]