Asparagus

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Ha! My kid will never eat asparagus.” And you may be right, I admit it. But you may be wrong! If your kid will eat green beans — and I give a lot of leeway to the word “will” there; if it makes it in their mouths one way or another, that’s all that counts — then your kid will very likely eat asparagus, when it’s prepared the right way.

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Oh, you didn’t know there’s a right way and a wrong way to prepare asparagus? Well there certainly is. I mean look at those things. They’re not appealing in the slightest, and right now, they taste the way they look. But we’re going to fix that.

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There are two key steps to making asparagus taste much, much better. First, you have to get rid of the hard, under-ripe part at the bottom of the stalk. To do this, don’t just cut it with a knife and hope you got it right. Instead, pinch the stalk at the very bottom, and bend it with your hands. The stalk will naturally break just where it begins to go soft, which is precisely where we want to separate it. Some may snap very close to the bottom, while others may snap halfway up the stalk, which just goes to show, you don’t want to estimate this stuff with a knife. Unless you like eating under-ripe food, I guess.

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The second key step is to peel the asparagus. That may sound silly, but trust me, it’s important. The outer skin tastes as different from the inside as a potato skin tastes compared to the inside of a potato. If I were a fancy food writer, I’d talk about how the skin tastes “woodsy and bitter,” but instead I’ll just tell you it’s gross. Eating unpeeled asparagus is the main reason most people think they don’t like asparagus.

Anyway, just lay the stalk flat on the cutting board, and run your vegetable peeler down the length of the stalk repeatedly as you slowly roll it along. It goes surprisingly fast.

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Steam them, covered, for about 7 minutes.

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Take a moment to notice the color difference between the cooked and the uncooked asparagus. Isn’t that beautiful? To serve to kids, just cut them into short pieces like green beans, saving the funny little heads for the grownups’ plates. Some of my kids even prefer asparagus to green beans, believe it or not.

A word of warning: if you’re in the habit of squirting lemon juice on your asparagus, you should know that without the tough outer skin, that lemon juice is going to change the color of the stalks, almost like bleach. It will still taste fine, but maybe save the lemon juice for the last second before you eat them so it’s not all splotchy-looking.

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Happy Eating!

 

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