1,608 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 77 videos

The green of leeks

We are all, consciously or not, very sensitive to the colour of our food. That's why a red strawberry will always seem more appetizing than a pale one, even if it's not necessarily true.

This is true for red, but it is also true for the green of certain vegetables.

21 K 4.0/5 (26 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Leek Green White Storage Cooking Chlorophyll

Last modified on: March 30^th 2020

For this post Comments Lasts posts Follow

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

And this sensitivity to colors is also sometimes a question of taste, we are a little conditioned by that, so much so that when a panel of testers do so-called "blind" tastings, for example of chocolate, the room where they are is only lit by a red light that masks everything, so as not to influence the testers. Indeed, if they like the color of the chocolate, they will tend to find it better than another chocolate less "pretty".

dégustation lumière rouge

It is therefore a question of color, of the appetite that follows, and indirectly of taste: a beautiful food with beautiful colors will please us more than something ugly and shriveled. In the bowl of apples on the table, you will surely and instinctively take the most beautiful available.

All this to say that making beautiful dishes is not only a question of aesthetics, it is also a question of how your guests will have their first impression, and it counts a lot.

In all this quest for beautiful colors, we have two almost antinomic things in the kitchen: green and cooking. Indeed, a lot of green vegetables are very beautiful and green when raw, but if you cook them (too) long, the chlorophyll they contain will degrade and they will become greenish or beige, in short, much less pretty, even if their taste is there.

An emblematic example: leeks, beautiful and green at the beginning, become dull after a long cooking, and a dish that illustrates it well is the leek-potato soup which is in full season as I write these lines.

poireau bien vert

If you're going to make potato leek soup, you're going to put potatoes and leeks together and cook them, normal, classic. That's a bit of a problem, the potatoes will cook much slower than the leeks, and to get the potatoes to cook properly, the leeks will be overcooked, and a bit dull in color.

Is there anything we can do?

Yes, it's just a matter of cooking time, finely sliced leek is cooked in 4-5 minutes max, potatoes definitely more. So for the ideal soup, cook the potatoes and onion first, and 5 minutes before the end, add the leek and finish cooking until it is tender.

poireaux cuits bien verts

This will give you the ideal leek-potato soup, tasty and with a beautiful, clean green colour, very appetizing.

To sum up: As a rule, green vegetables do not stand long cooking times, so if they have to be cooked with other products, it is always a good idea to cook them last and for as little time as possible.

Lasts posts

Season to the right level

When you need to salt something—for example, fish fillets before cooking them—you’ll naturally sprinkle them with a pinch of salt using your fingers. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this very ordinary gesture, which is done all the time in the kitchen, and yet there’s a...
October 14^th 2026996

How to Properly Fill a Jar

When you have a jar in your kitchen that’s almost empty—flour or almond flour, for example—you’ll probably refill it before it’s completely empty. And that’s a great way to go about it—no one wants to run out of an ingredient right in the middle of a recipe. Once you’ve...
October 2^nd 20269105

Serving Temperature for Wine

When it comes to serving wine, you may (like me) have a fairly simple rule of thumb: red wine at room temperature, and white, rosé, and yellow wines in the fridge until it’s time to serve them. It’s very easy to remember, but it’s a bit simplistic, and you’ll see that there’s a much...
September 23^th 20261,0135

Hot Emulsified Sauces

In French cuisine, sauces are a very important part of a recipe—not just a side dish. In fact, they’re so important that, especially since the time of Auguste Escoffier, they’ve been classified into categories. And among these categories are “hot emulsified sauces,” or lukewarm ones. ...
September 9^th 20261,4175

Hot Dishes and Cold Dishes

When plating or serving a dish—whether hot or cold—on a plate, it’s very important to make sure they’re both the right temperature; in other words: if the dish is hot, the plate should be hot, and conversely, if the dish is cold, the plate should be cold. Is this really important? Let’s...
September 2^nd 20261,1563

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other articles you might also like

The perfect boiled egg

Making boiled eggs is always a delight and it pleases the young and old alike. This little transgenerational side puts them on the list of "things to do on Sunday evening when you don't know what to do" in many families (including mine)... That said, it's not that simple, you have to pay...
January 30^th 202119 K4.7

How to avoid lumps

You've probably come across this unpleasant phenomenon where, when you try to incorporate an ingredient (usually a solid or powder) into a preparation (usually a liquid), the mixture doesn't mix properly and you end up with little "balls" or little lumps of the solid part that refuse to mix with the...
October 9^th 202026 K4.8

Pastry and bakery dough families

There are many kinds, or families, of pastry and bakery doughs, depending on whether you want to make a tart, a cake, a pie, a brioche, croissants and so on. I'll try to give you a quick overview of all these doughs, how they're classified, and what they're used for.
November 16^th 202015 K4.9

The delicious complexity of Jura wines

Do you know the wines of the Jura? Maybe not, it's a small appellation, 2000 hectares, with a production of wines that are both very atypical and very typical, even unique for some of them. Let me tell you a few words about it.
May 14^th 202215 K4.9

The gelling agent in a cream

If you start making a Bavarian cream for example, or any other that contains a gelling agent such as gelatin or agar-agar, you will sooner or later be confronted with the problem: How to properly incorporate this gelling agent into my cream? (and we will focus on gelatin).
June 18^th 202216 K4.9