Soaking is not something I think a great deal about, or indeed do. I never wash soft fruit for example, on the basis it’s pretty clean anyway and whatever has been sprayed on it is unlikely to be washed away by a brief soaking in water. The same goes for most fruit. When it comes to vegetables I tend to wash spinach – too much grit – but not beans or pretty much anything else I can get away with.
Soaking potatoes is something I do when making Dauphinoise, but not much else. I’ve been experimenting with oven chips recently and particularly when the potatoes are cut thin, an overnight soaking helps to avoid the mealiness they tend to suffer from. The science will point to the starch, but I can’t claim to understand it much. After all, doesn’t starch result in the rich creaminess we all love so much in potatoes?
As for vegetables generally, we are so conditioned to blanching. Try a good soaking and then braise with oil or butter. The route is popular in Egypt with beans. The cooking slow, often with thinly sliced garlic which almost melts. But even just with salt and pepper broccoli takes on a completely different and more intense flavour. So too everything from French to runner beans. Just think of the leaching that inevitably results from boiling water. This way you get it all in concentrated form.
Gordon Ramsay once pointed out to me over a coffee – I kid you not, we were judging a competition together now that you ask – that while he put a great deal of time into sourcing the best veg he could, at best his broccoli was likely to be marginally fresher/better than what most people buy. The difference, he argued, was that where cooks cook it, he and his team were looking to extract, persuade as much of the flavour as possible. Nothing like a good soaking then.
In Japan they soak vegetables in ice-cold water which results in pleasant twisting and turning as well as a crispness. Think spring onions and leeks. it works for lettuce too. Water may no longer be free, but in the right circumstances and with time a good bath can work wonders.
So what does this mean for me?: A little time spent looking at what you do and why you do or don’t do it can pay dividends
Tell me what I should do: Experiment. Comparative tasting is always revealing and indisputable. Don’t believe me? Blind taste and ask for opinions. Release the scientist in you.
