How to Blanch Broccoli

Raw broccoli is fine and all, but a quick cooking method called blanching takes broccoli from boring to darn right tasty. Here’s How to Blanch Broccoli for adding to salads, veggie bowls, and the prettiest vegetable platter ever.

Blanched broccoli is fabulous served with Homemade Ranch Dressing for dipping, or added to Piggly Wiggly Salad (Broccoli Salad with Bacon and Cheese). Toss it up the Seafood Salad, or dress a big bowl of bright green broccoli in Asian Salad Dressing for a fun, healthy side dish.

Making blanched broccoli for a huge shindig? You’ll need a bigger pot! Click and slide the number next to “servings” on the recipe card below to adjust the ingredients to match how many you’re feeding—the recipe does the math for you, it’s that easy.

What is blanching?

It’s a cooking method often used with asparagus, green beens, cauliflower, broccoli, and broccolini, to name a few. Food is plunged in to boiling water to briefly cook, then plunged into an ice bath to quickly stop the process. It leaves the vegetable, in this case broccoli, perfectly tender-crisp and gorgeously green.

What you do with blanched vegetables is up to you. Throw a handful of blanched broccoli into salads, onto pizza, into a quick stir-fry, or eat it as-is with your favorite salad dressing. You could even sneak it into cheesy pasta or macaroni and cheese.

How to cut broccoli:

To keep things as mess-free as possible, cutting broccoli is easy when you start from the bottom.

First, trim about an inch of the dried end off of the stem or “trunk.”

If the trunk is woody, hollow and dry in the center, or appears tough, keep trimming until you get to the tender green flesh. The entire main stem of the broccoli as well as the florets are edible, but the stem takes longer to cook. Save the stem for a good stir fry.

To break the broccoli into smaller pieces for roasting, steaming, or throwing on the grill, find a sharp knife. Then slice into the stem at the point where the “branches” of the vegetable form the crown.

To make broccoli florets, slice straight through the trunk much higher, close to the crown of the vegetable. Then cut off florets into bite-sized pieces. Rinse under cold water if needed.

How to blanch broccoli:

1. If you can boil water, you can absolutely blanch broccoli. Once you have your florets cut, bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil.
2. While you wait for the water to boil, make another bowl filled with ice and cold water. Keep this nearby!
3. Carefully lower the broccoli florets into the boiling water and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, depending on the size of your floret. The broccoli should be bright green and just barely tender.

   
4. With a slotted spoon, remove the broccoli and immediately plunge into the ice water. Called “shocking”, this will halt the cooking process and keep the broccoli super bright green and still crunchy.
5. When the broccoli is completely cool, drain it from the ice water and pat dry with a paper towel.

How long to blanch broccoli:

Blanched broccoli florets are ready after 2 to 3 minutes of boiling, depending on how crisp you like your veg. But hurry up and get them in ice water to stop the cooking! Letting them cool down naturally will continue to cook the broccoli, making it overdone.

Blanching broccolini:

Because broccolini is smaller than broccoli, with finer stems, blanching broccolini doesn’t take a lot of time. Aim for a 1-minute cooking time, at most.

Blanching cauliflower:

By the way, this technique works for cauliflower, too! Blanching cauliflower is super easy. Hint: add a pinch or two of powdered turmeric to the water to make the tender cauliflower a pretty golden yellow.

How long to blanch cauliflower? 2 to 3 minutes, if the cauliflower is cut into bite-sized pieces.