Blanching

(food engineering) A hot-water or steam direct-scalding treatment of raw foodstuffs of particulate type to inactivate enzymes which otherwise might cause quality deterioration, particularly of flavor, during processing or storage.

A partial precooking by plunging the food into hot water (82-95 °C) for ½-5 min. Fruits and vegetables are blanched before canning, drying, or freezing, to soften the texture, remove air, denature enzymes that may cause spoilage when frozen, and remove undesirable flavours. Blanching is also performed to remove excess salt from preserved meat, and to aid the removal of skin, e.g. from almonds and tomatoes. There can be a loss of 10-20% of the sugars, salts, and protein, as well as some of the vitamins B₁, B₂, and niacin, and up to one third of the vitamin C.

For the term used in coinage, see Blanching (coinage).

The first step in blanching green beans

Blanching (also spelled blenching) is a cooking term that describes a process of food preparation wherein the food substance, usually a vegetable or fruit, is plunged into boiling water, removed after a brief, timed interval, and finally plunged into iced water or placed under cold running water (shocked) to halt the cooking process.

When almonds or pistachios are blanched, the skin of the nut (botanically the seed coat surrounding the embryo) becomes softened by blanching and is later removed.

Contents 1 See also 2 Images 3 References 4 External links

See also

Food portal

• Parboil

Images

Freshly blanched pistachios for dessert cookery

Blanched almonds

References

• Desrossier, NW, The technology of food preservation, The AVI Publishing Company, 1965, p. 150-151

External links

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on Blanching

• Free Culinary School Podcast Episode 3A podcast discussing the importance of blanching and the science behind the technique.
• How to Blanch Almonds at about.com

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