deglazing.com

Today’s daily definition comes from www.epicurious.com.  If you love cooking and haven’t checked out their site yet, I suggest you do so.  It’s a great web site with lots of useful information and thousands of recipes. 

Blanch and blanching are terms you see a lot in cooking, like adding blanched corn to a salsa recipe.  Most people know it has something to do with dropping vegetables into a pot of hot water, but why do we do that?  Epicurious has the answer.

“Blanch-
1. To plunge food (usually vegetables and fruits) into boiling water briefly, then into cold water to stop the cooking process. Blanching is used to firm the flesh, to loosen skins (as with peaches and tomatoes) and to heighten and set color and flavor (as with vegetables before freezing).”

Barron’s Educational Services, Inc. 1995 based on THE FOOD LOVER’S COMPANION, 2nd edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst