Poaching And Boiling

This is for you Julius!

The basic difference between poaching and boiling, as scientifically as I can put it, is basically how fast the air bubbles move in the water. Think of poaching as SLOW and boiling as FAST.

Generally you would poach dishes where you want the 'food' you are cooking to cook slowly and not be treated aggressively thus sometimes losing shape and colour. Another example where you would want to poach is if it is a very 'tough' food and you want to soften it slowly.

With the hybrid cabbage, I chose to poach it rather than boil because I wanted it to retain its shape and the bottom part was abit stringy so I felt slow cooking would have been the best option. Other examples of great poaching dishes are poached pears or poached eggs.

Boiling is actually the best way to cook vegetables. It seals in the vitamins and vegetables retain their vibrant colour. When blanching vegetables or cooking pasta you definately want a rapid boil.

And regarding your comment about throwing all the sauces you have on your shelve when cooking, I used to do that too. But after awhile I felt all my dishes came out the same! So, I 'deconstructed' and started to use my sauces for what they are and combined only one or two at a time. From that I found a whole new range of dishes started to emerge.