Welcome to Serious Eats at Home! Today, I'm excited to share with you a quick and easy method for cooking vegetables, specifically asparagus. As many of you know, I've recently moved into a new home and have a bit more space and kitchen room than my previous place. This gives me the perfect opportunity to experiment with new recipes and techniques.
To start, all you'll need is a cast iron or carbon steel pan, some fresh vegetables, and a little bit of vegetable oil. The method I'm about to share with you is one that I use all the time for charring vegetables like asparagus, cabbage, or snap peas. For today's recipe, we're focusing on charring asparagus.
First, let's start by searing off a bavette steak in just a little bit of vegetable oil over high heat. Turning occasionally until I got nice sear and it's just out of the pan and resting. Now that our steak is cooking, we can use the same carbon steel pan to cook our asparagus. This is what's really nice about this method - you're able to cook your side dish in the time that it takes for your meat to rest.
To get started with our asparagus, I'm going to trim off the very ends. Now, I know some of you might have heard people talk about "breaking" asparagus between their hands and telling where it breaks is where it's supposed to be. Unfortunately, this can often lead to a lot of wasted asparagus. What we really want to do is cut just off the bottom inch or so, depending on the thickness of our spears.
Now that our asparagus is trimmed, let's separate the thicker spears from the thinner ones. This will help us cook them at different rates, as they all cook at slightly different times. We'll start with the thicker ones and cook them over medium-high heat until we get a nice char on one side. Once those are done, we can add in the thinner ones and repeat the process.
To cook our thicker spears, we need to make sure the pan is hot, no oil in the pan. This will help prevent any fat from splattering up and burning us while we cook. For this recipe, I'm using a super heavy weight like a can of tomatoes to weigh down my asparagus spears. However, for thinner spears, I'll use tongs or my hands to hold them in place, making sure not to touch the pan itself.
To get that perfect "droop" we want to see on our cooked asparagus, we need to cook it quickly over high heat and then let it cool slightly. Once we've got all of our spears cooked, we can season with a little bit of oil, salt, and pepper. That's it! Our charred asparagus is now ready to be served alongside your favorite sauce or dish.
For this recipe, I'm using a simple chimichurri made with herbs that I picked up at the farmer's market. This sauce is perfect for summer nights when you don't want to spend too much time cooking and just want something light and easy. And let me tell you, this charred asparagus is one of my favorite ways to enjoy it!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone welcome back to serious eats at home uh i am not at home i am in a different home than my last video because i am house-sitting and i have a little more space a little more kitchen space and i am cooking today a little trick for cooking vegetables uh it's like a really quick way to get a nice side dish on the table in the time that you would say rest the steak all you'll really need is a cast iron or carbon steel pan and some nice fresh vegetables this is a method that i use all the time for charring vegetables like asparagus or cabbage or snap peas depending on the time of year today i am charring asparagus before cooking the asparagus i seared off this bavette steak in just a little bit of vegetable oil over high heat uh turning you know every so often until i got nice sear and it's just out of the pan and resting so we're gonna use the same carbon steel pan that we use to cook the steak to cook the asparagus and that's what's really nice about this method of cooking is that you're able to cook your side dish in the time that it takes for your you know meat to rest if you're cooking a steak or a chop or something like that and you get to use the same pan so it's kind of that like one pan meal type deal but you're not cooking everything all at the same time the asparagus will cook really quickly and we're going to go into a dry pan so the steak was cooked with a little bit of oil after it came out of the pan i just gave it a quick rinse and then got it going over high heat with no fat whatsoever in the pan for cooking the asparagus itself all i did was trimmed off the very ends oftentimes you'll hear people talk about you know break it between your you know hold it and break it and where it breaks is where it's supposed to be oftentimes that you end up wasting a bunch of asparagus that way you really just need to cut the sort of you know half inch or so off the bottom not all asparagus spears will cook at the same rate got you know little thin ones and big big big boys over here you know we just gotta cook them at different times so i just separated the really thin spears from the really thick ones and we'll just cook them differently i'll just cook start with the thick ones so we're cooking over medium high to high heat depending on the size of your burners you're seeing some smoke come off the pan right now that's just a little bit of residual oil from cooking the steak you can you know wipe that out with a towel so going in with the asparagus and you just want to get it in a single layer and then try and get as much even contact with the pan as possible if you had something like the chef's press weights that i really like using for cooking this would be a great moment to use them you know press down on them make sure that you're getting even contact but you could even use something you know like a a nice little can of tomatoes or something like that make sure that you're not like totally crushing your asparagus and what we're looking to do is to get nice even char on the spears on one side and then we'll flip them over with the thin ones you'll probably end up just cooking just charring them on one side because you'd end up overcooking them if you tried to char but no fat in the pan also no salt or pepper right now in the pan if you've ever cooked asparagus probably know that salt has a little trouble adhering to asparagus you just throw it in there bounces right back off and you kind of need fat to be in there with the asparagus in order for salt to adhere to it so we are going to wait to season the asparagus until the end when we add some fat to the pan and once in a while we can just sort of check how things are developing with your char looking good and you'll notice as the asparagus cooks it'll start to get more vibrantly green i hate when you get asparagus it's all droopy and sad for me asparagus when you cook it it should just start to like bend under its own weight and we'll see what that looks like in a second oh yeah some of these are really nice you see how like you know when we started it was like this and it's just starting to come droop down a little bit so we're real close and it's not going to be the same for everyone see this one's so thick it's gonna take a little longer once the asparagus start on both sides you're getting that nice droopy action where you want it just gonna go in with a touch of vegetable oil and then we'll toss and season with salt and pepper as well so working quickly just a touch of oil in the pan season with some salt pepper and out and now we're going to move on to the thinner ones cooking these less because you know they're thinner they're going to cook faster so we're really going to just char them on one side again get your carbon steel pan ripping hot no oil in the pan and same process you can weigh them down again these are thinner so going with a super heavy weight like the can of tomatoes that i was using before might not be the best idea now because i don't want to damage these asparagus spears i'm just going to press on them with my hands you can use you know tongs back your hand or whatever because there's no fat in the pin there's no risk of like you know fat splattering up and burning you as long as you don't touch the pan itself you'll be fine these aren't all the same size even for thin ones this one much thinner than this one what you can do is either start with the thicker ones in the pan and then add the thin ones to make sure they cook at the right rate or you can just take the thin ones out for a second while you let the slightly thicker ones finish cooking and then you'll get them back in to finish cooking at the end we're getting that droop that we're talking about perfect so we'll get the small ones back in touch of oil a little shake salt just a little bit tiny bit of pepper and out that's it all you have to do now slice your steak plate up your asparagus again you don't need steak you can just have nice charred asparagus with the sauce of your choosing uh right for this one i'm using a nice little chimichurri that i made with some herbs that i picked up at the farmer's market because it's summer i don't want to cook and have another sauce that i have to worry about that's hot so i'm looking for like low lift easy sauces i really love eating asparagus this way still got some flex to it it's not hammered it's not you know shrively super super soggy or anything and it's just a really simple nice little side dish that you can put together you know a week night on the weekends you just don't want to right now i don't want to be spending a ton of time on side dishes and the kids that didn't overcook the asparagus that i can't explain enough to me i really don't like overcooked asparagus and this is really nice you can tell color's still vibrant and green it's still got nice chew to it but it's not raw or anything and i just threw some across the room perfect don't put that in the video joe cut\n"
