How to prepare asparagus

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 4 Hows to prepare asparagus, you will need:

• 1 250 g asparagus
• Total weight: 250 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
26 min.	7 min.	33 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Peel the asparagus: cut 1 cm (1/2 inch) off the bottom, then peel with a vegetable peeler from the bottom upwards, stopping before you reach the tip. You can see how to do this in the video at the side.
2	Rinse the peeled asparagus under running water, paying particular attention to the tips that have not been peeled.
3	Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add salt and plunge in the asparagus. Cook for about 7 minutes.
4	Check if cooked by sticking a knife into a spear towards the base. It should go through the asparagus quite easily (like through butter).
5	Take the asparagus out of the pan and drain thoroughly.
6	Lay the spears on absorbant paper to wait. Your asparagus is ready.

Remarks

If the asparagus spears stay wet once cooked, they risk giving off water when eaten or when used in a recipe. This is why it is important to drain them well after cooking, even using a salad spinner.
You will find a lot of recipes that advise cooking asparagus "in a bundle". I don't find this particularly effective; simply cooking them in boiling water is far quicker.

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