Vegetable Discussion Thread (Caution: It's Steamy in Here)
 

By request from Wanzer! ITT, we will talk about how we like our vegetables cooked, what we like our vegetables in, and if the tomato is a vegetable.

I haven't run into a vegetable I don't like, however, I am inexperienced when it comes to eating vegetables in different ones. Most vegetables I have only tried one way. For example, I have never eaten asparagus plain. One vegetable I am experienced with is Avacado (wiki says it's a vegetable, but I'm never sure about a lot of these). It is not only my favorite vegetable, but my favorite food.

Usually, I clean and slice up my vegetables, heat up some oil with slivers of garlic, toss the veggies in along with some water, cap until the veggies are cooked, stir in some salt and chicken broth powder, and then serve.

Run-on free version: I stirfry veggies with garilc.

Mmmm stop... you're making me hungry, and I just ate dinner. You know, dishes like that (stir-fried vegetables) really aren't that common, at least not amongst the people I eat with. They are really a good tasting and of course healthy meal, which makes me wonder why it doesn't happen more.

I had a nutrition teacher who told me that cooking vegetables makes them lose a significant amount of their fiber. I guess this makes sense because they are obviously less rigid once cooked. I wonder if that has anything to do with it? I guess that would be giving people too much credit for intelligence.

AFAIK, it's true that vegetables lose some fiber (particularly hemicellulose) during cooking. I'm guessing, however, that other fibers do not disappear to a great degree - because then, the vegetables will completely turn into mush after cooking, since the structure of vegetables depends a great deal on fibers like cellulose.

A quick check of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking tells me that vegetables go limp during cooking because of loss of water pressure in the plant cells after damage to cell membranes during cooking. This makes sense to me, because it explains why there's more water in the pan after cooking then before, if I'm stir-frying vegetables.

I like my vegetables cooked until almost all traces of crunchiness are lost, but not until they're mush. I hate raw veggies (unless it's lettuce, tomatoes, or anything you normally find in a salad) and anything between raw and cooked. Sadly we don't cook many fresh veggies ourselves at my house. Dinner usually consists of a meat, a carbohydrate-packed dish, and some form of canned veggie. I've been making a giant salad with every meal to try and make up for the lack of culinary initiative around here.

As for the tomato thing, I know it's a fruit, but I tend to think of anything savory as a vegetable. It's just how my mind works. Olives, tomatoes, and avocados are fruits but get lumped into the vegetable group in my head because of how they taste.

This thread makes me feel so dirty.

Anyway, I don't cook many fresh vegetables either, but when I do, I steam them, and try to keep them as crisp as possible. Asparagus is especially hard to get done perfectly, because there's not much time between "too raw" and "mushy". Now that I have an electric grill, I throw them on there, and it's a lot easier to get them the right consistency.

I've read in a few different places that the tomato has switched back and forth through history, are you sure it's classified a fruit now?

Depends on who you ask, I guess. A botanist will tell you it's a fruit, because that's what is is, botanically speaking. As far as federal law is concerned, though, I think it's still a vegetable.

Wait, what? Garlic?
Garlic's just not meant to be fried. If you use too much heat (read, anything above the minimum :mad:) it burns and smells horrible. If on the other hand, you use perfectly right heat and ignore the rest of the vegetables in order to cook it right, you cook it right and the other stuff eventually cooks properly took ... only to find out that the taste of properly cooked garlic is absolutely disgusting.
It's too volotile and the taste is just horrible. I save it for fresh salads, and only a small bit then for the smell.

But aye, I too love stir frying things. I won't lie, though, I'm an impatient guy and given the choice between frying things or eating them raw, I'd rather eat them raw. I eat plenty of things raw: carrots, tomatos, mushrooms, green peppers, cabbage hearts, heck a thousand other edible vegetables. Anyone else just eats raw things?

I never burn my garlic - that's because I watch it carefully during the initial stages of the cooling, and then add a bit of water together with the vegetables. The garlic doesn't actually end up being fried, but it still lends a bit of flavor to the coked vegetables.

I sometimes eat raw vegetables - not that often, though, since I prefer them cooked.

My favorite way of consuming avocado is not unlike sashimi: sliced into 1/4 inch-thick slivers and dipped in soysauce with a bit of wasabi. I heard mayonaise + soysauce is good for accomplimenting avocado, but to me that sounds a little too rich and high in cholesterol for my taste. I stick to mayonaise + soysauce for using as sauce on steamed / flash boiled broccoli and asparagus.

As a general rule for veggies, I cook them a variety of ways, but I usually stick to one rule is that the condiments that go with them be homemade. Dressings, dipping sauces like the aforementioned soysauce + wasabi / mayonaise combo, etc.

Mayonnaise and soy sauce with avacado is fantastic, but you really can't beat the generic guacamole. Hot DAMN!

Damn I really want avocados now. Soy sauce only or salt and pepper.

You know what I found really surprising. Brussel Sprouts. They're just like little cabbages, I don't know why everyone whines about them. I had some at a restaurant that were broiled with the pot roast dish and they were curiously delicious.

I have boiled brusselsprouts just about every other day. They're fantastic. I don't even put anything else on them. I wonder what they taste like raw.

Bad, I'd imagine. I usually, er, stir-fry them. [/stuckrecord]

They taste almost exactly as they do when boiled, only somehow worse. Definitey more bitter, as the boiling draws out some of the nutrients that contribute to the flavor.

Brussel sprouts are horrible anyway. They smell bad and get bitter far too early in their growth cycle. You can't do much with them in recipes, as their outer layers can be quite tough. They're essentially small cabbages, and cabbage is just as godawful (the fact that it's used to make sauerkraut only compounds the sins of cabbage.)

If it weren't for the nutritive value of brussel sprouts (tons of Vitamin A and C, with decent fiber content) they'd serve no culinary purpose whatsoever.

They are spectacular with cream sauce!

That is one hell of a cream sauce, then. That's all I'll say.