1,544 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Should asparagus really be cooked in bunches?

You'll probably read recipes here and there explaining how to cook asparagus "en botte", i.e. in a small package (the famous "botte").

Is this really the right way to cook asparagus?

7,853 5/5 (1 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Asparagus Cooking Tip Bundle Legend

Last modified on: May 22^th 2024

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Should asparagus really be cooked in bunches?

"Botte" cooking

This is a method familiar to all professional cooks when cooking asparagus: peel the asparagus, tie it together with string or a rubber band to form a small bundle, the "botte", and plunge it into boiling salted water.

asperges en botte

Check for doneness by pricking one of the asparagus spears with the tip of a knife, and if it's easily pierced, the asparagus is done.
Remove the bundle from the water, drain and cut the string.

Is this a good method?

This method seems like a good idea, but it's not. In practice, doing it this way leads to problems with cooking levels.

Bunching the asparagus increases the overall cooking time, with the asparagus around the edges cooking faster than the asparagus in the middle, which takes longer.
This difference in cooking time means that some asparagus (again, those in the middle) may be overcooked, while those in the middle may be undercooked.
If you want to check doneness with the tip of a knife, it's almost impossible with the asparagus in the center, unless you go through the asparagus in the middle.

In short, you'll have understood that this is not a good method, and that it's much better to cook your asparagus the traditional way , in a large pot of boiling salted water, like any other vegetable.

asperges en cuisson classique asperges cuites

It's quicker and more effective.

To sum up: don't cook your asparagus in bunches, as they won't cook as evenly as conventional asparagus.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20251,4805

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,2855

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,177

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20253,3315

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20257,9413

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Making the most of seeds: Dry roasting

In cooking, and particularly in baking, there are a lot of seeds we can use, such as linseed, sesame, poppy, etc. Usually, recipes simply say to add them just as they are to the mixture or dough. To make a seeded loaf, for example, prepare a plain bread dough as usual, then, towards the end of...
January 30^th 201562 K4.0

The French baguette and UNESCO

As you may have already read here or there, France has initiated for some time the procedure to try to have the French baguette classified as an intangible world heritage by UNESCO. When you put it like that, it sounds a bit namby-pamby, and it would be tempting to imagine an American (for...
March 18^th 202015 K4.9

The right weight of pastry for a pie

Let's try to solve a thorny problem: How much dough will I need when I make my next pie? You're planning to make a pie, you're going to use your favourite mould or circle, but how much pastry will you need to fill it completely with a well spread pastry, without being too thin, or on the contrary...
March 20^th 202067 K4.3

The skin side of the fish first?

When it comes to cooking fresh fish, if it's filleted with its skin on and you're planning to pan-fry it in a little olive oil, for example, you might ask yourself the following question: Which side, skin or flesh, should come into contact with the pan first?
February 13^th 202126 K4.4

The salad spinner is not only for salad

Where we see that the salad spinner can be used for many other purposes.
March 25^th 202211 K4.8