Along with steaming, blanching vegetables is a basic technique every cook should know. Briefly boiled and then plunged into ice water, these bright and tender-crisp vegetables may be used in crudité platters, salads, sushi rolls, and stir fries, or refrigerated or frozen for later use. Blanching is a classic technique that involves quickly cooking food in boiling water then dunking it in ice water to stop the cooking process.
