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

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by DeLorean

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

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

I was speaking idiomatically.