Preparing Asparagus for Healthy Cooking Recipes

Part of the Video Series How to Cook Vegetables

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Learn how to prepare asparagus and what to add for flavor to asparagus in this free how-to video on cooking with vegetables and healthy recipes.

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Preparing Asparagus for Healthy Cooking Recipes
Hi! I'm Louis Ortiz on behalf of Expert Village and today we are going to show you how to cut and prepare asparagus. Most folks will steam asparagus as far as that goes and there are actual steamer baskets that are made especially for that purpose. You can actually sautee it with a tiny bit of water and with some clarified butter and cover with a sautee pan and steam it to consistency is another way to do it. What makes it a lot easier to eat, if you will notice there is a lot of fibrous, woody almost stalk that extends to the base of each piece of asparagus. So as soon as the white starts to fade into a green that is usually where I try to make the cut and take that off. So we are going to do that and get rid of that. Now the asparagus itself becomes more tender as it gets darker green towards the tip and its about where my index finger is here and all the way up. So from this point down, what I want to do is just take a peeler and I just want to kind of peel off the fibrous outer layer which will make this much easier to eat and plus it will give you a lot more usable product as far as that goes. Some folks won't take the stuff off, they just cook it. As the plates are being finished, you will notice that only this much of the asparagus has been eaten and the rest gets thrown in the trash because it is uneatable. I really taken just one layer to expose that and I can already tell it is a little more tender with my fingers this direction, going back this way and this will obviously be the eatable portion without doing that. Now we've got total usable and a total eatable product. Looks kind of nice on the plate because you've got some variation, two colors of green so it really brightens up a plate as a side dish along with the protein and starch. That's the preparation and the steps that we take so that we have a prettier piece of the asparagus on the plate and a lot more eatable product as well.

About the Expert

Expert: Louis Ortiz is a professional chef instructor at a culinary institute. He has been working in the culinary industry for 10 years. Read More