I was wondering what will they lose if you remove the water and eat them like this. Will they have the same nutritional value as they would have if i'd eat them with their water?.
Responses (1)
Boiling any food has the potential to reduce the nutritional value (vitamins normaly) especially if you over boil it. This is one reason why some people prefer to steam vegetables as it preserves far more of the nutrition in the food. A good trick though is to use the minimum water needed to cook the veg and then reduce the remaining water and use it to make a sauce. That way you lose nothing, a simple white sauce can be easily made from the water you boiled the veg in.
Percentage of lose.. sorry, can't help you there but the sauce.. ok, take the water left over from boiling the vegetables and let it simmer, the water will boil off and and thicken. When it's reduced by half put it to one side. Take a frying pan and add some oil, heat the oil but don't let it burn, then add some flour and stir it into the oil off the heat. The flour and oil will mix to form a paste. Return teh frying pan to a mild heat and slowly add the reduced vegetable water making sure to keep stirring. If you add it all at once you'll get lumps, so add it slowly and stir. If you get it right you'll end up with an even slightly thick sauce. Remember that you don't have to use all the water, too much and the sauce will be to thin and you'll need to experiment to get the oil/flour mix right.
A very nice sauce to make is one from roast meats (a gravy) instead of using oil you simply use the fat from the roast, add flour and use the water from the boiled carrots, swedes, peas or whatever you're eating with it to thin out the paste you make. The richer the fat (and meat juices) the richer the gravy.
The flavour will be stronger the more you reduce the water (or you can add a vegetable stock cube to the water to enhance the flavour)
Is there a way to find out how much percent of its nutritional value a food loses after over boiling ? I understand that noone can know for sure and the results wont be accurate but i wonder what(or how much) will the food lose.
As for the sauce, that sounds nice!I really havent thought of it. Can you tell me how can this be done?
Thank you for your answer by the way.