Boiled vegetables: benefits and harms, recipes
Every person eats vegetables. Some eat them raw, while others prefer only boiled. Raw fruits certainly contain a lot of nutrients, since when cooked, many of them lose most of their beneficial properties. Scientists have proved the fact that cooking activates other substances and gives a certain vegetable additional value. However, not all fruits can be cooked: radish and cucumber, for example. And vice versa, you don’t want to eat raw pumpkin with potatoes either.
Features of boiled vegetables
You can determine what is more useful - raw green, yellow, red fruits or boiled in a saucepan. Boiled vegetables are characterized by several features, some of which can be attributed to the disadvantages of the cooking process of vegetables, and the other to the advantages. True, these benefits are not always needed by healthy people.
- The cooking temperature can break down the walls of plants at the cellular level and extract the nutrients contained in the cells.
- How much vitamin C contained in them loses its properties depends on the cooking time and method of cooking vegetables. This figure varies from 55 to 100 percent.
- During heat treatment, fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E are released.
- When cooking, vegetables are often poured with hot water in order to lose a minimum of vitamins and useful trace elements.
- Decoctions of green and ripe vegetables contain many nutrients released during the cooking process.
- People with ailments of the digestive system are contraindicated in the use of poorly digestible coarse fiber contained in raw root crops and leguminous crops. If you boil them, this problem disappears.
How to cook?
Still, you need to be able to properly boil vegetables, so that they bring maximum benefit to the body.
- To begin with, the fruits must be washed under running water; for cleaning, you can use a clean sponge for washing dishes.
- It is not recommended to use chopped blanks for cooking.
- Cook in an enamel pot with the lid closed and over low heat until tender.
- Vitamins are better preserved if the vegetables are immediately lowered into a cauldron with boiling water.
- To help the hostess, there are cooking time tables that clearly define how and how much to boil.
- Using the example of boiling potatoes and carrots: for salads, you can cook them in slightly salty water.
- Beets, for example, should be placed in boiling water with the addition of a small amount of lemon juice or 6% vinegar. It also takes into account the fact that the cooking time of beets is much longer than other vegetables. It is necessary to take this fact into account and pour water into tall dishes.
- The readiness of vegetables is checked with the tip of a knife or fork.
- Boil vegetables should be on minimum heat (reduce after boiling liquid). This is necessary for uniform heating and whole readiness of boiled fruits.
Cook or eat raw?
To understand what is the benefit and what harm is more significant from eating raw or boiled vegetables, it is necessary to consider each fruit separately. Tomato, zucchini, garlic or any other vegetable have their own characteristics in this matter, it all depends on the dosage of the product eaten.Often the causes of problems from vegetables are either overeating or eating them in an unripe form.
Scientists have proven that carotene contained in carrots, rose hips, parsley, is well absorbed by the body from boiled vegetables. Rutabaga is more suitable for the body in boiled form, but its concentrated juice is dangerous in some cases. Raw potatoes in Russian traditions are not eaten, but are served boiled or baked.
The beneficial substance lycopene, most of which is found in tomatoes and watermelons, is not destroyed during cooking, so ketchup and tomato paste are very healthy and full of nutrients. We must understand that vegetables in our diet should be present both raw and boiled.
By the way, carrots in the soup are relatively healthier than the raw fruit in the salad.
Popular Recipes
Some popular dishes, such as Russian salad and vinaigrette, require the preparation of certain ingredients by boiling.
To prepare Olivier salad, you can use the cooking time table. What exactly to boil will tell the salad recipe itself.
- 6 potatoes and 3 carrots are boiled until tender. To properly cook the ingredients, it is convenient to use the vegetable cooking time table (photo 1), according to which potatoes are cooked in water for 20 minutes, and in a slow cooker - 30 minutes. For carrots, you need 30 minutes of cooking in water, and 40 minutes in a slow cooker. If you use a pressure cooker for cooking, the cooking process is slightly reduced.
- Then 2 onions are cut into half rings and a bunch of green onions is chopped.
- Two pickled cucumbers, 200 grams of sausage, 6 hard-boiled eggs are cut into cubes, as for a classic salad.
- 1 glass of peas, salt, black pepper, mayonnaise are added.
Vegetables are recommended to be boiled with the skin on in order to preserve their taste and aroma.
The vinaigrette recipe also includes the process of cooking vegetables. How to do it right? The cooking time for vegetable ingredients for vinaigrette is the same as for olivier. Making a vinaigrette is easy.
- Boiled carrots, potatoes and beets, which, after cooling and peeling, are cut into cubes.
- A can of green peas and sauerkraut are added. This recipe is a classic vinaigrette recipe. However, in different versions of the recipe, cabbage and peas are not added, or, on the contrary, they experiment with onions.
Everyone, no doubt, loves a delicate salad, a traditional New Year's dish of all Russians - herring under a fur coat. There have been a large number of modifications to the recipe during the existence of the salad. However, properly boiled vegetables for herring under a fur coat remain the key to the success of an excellent salad. For cooking ingredients such as potatoes, carrots and beets, time frames can also be applied, as well as for cooking vegetables for olivier. Beets are boiled from 30 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the method of cooking, the size and age of the fetus.
Next are the classic ingredients: herring, eggs, onions and boiled vegetables are smeared in layers with mayonnaise. Top with juicy pomegranate seeds.
Which vegetables are healthier - fresh or boiled, see the next video.