Broccoli salad
Raw broccoli, blanched for sixty seconds. That minute changes the texture completely.
- 190
- kcal
- 7g
- protein
- 13g
- fat
- 12g
- carbs
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 2 min
- Serves
- 4
Photograph by Amar Preciado on Pexels
Ingredients
- 1 head broccoli, cut into small florets
- 1/3 cup toasted almonds, chopped
- 1/4 red onion, sliced paper thin
- 2 tbsp raisins
- 3 tbsp yogurt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
Method
-
1
Blanch the florets for 60 seconds in boiling salted water, then into ice water. Drain thoroughly.
-
2
Whisk the yogurt, oil and lemon juice.
-
3
Toss everything together and leave 15 minutes before eating.
The sixty-second blanch
Raw broccoli in a salad is aggressive: squeaky, bitter, and hard work to chew. Cooked broccoli in a salad is limp. Sixty seconds in boiling salted water followed immediately by ice water sits exactly between the two — it sets the colour bright green, softens the texture just enough, and knocks the raw edge off the flavour without touching the crunch.
The ice water is not optional. Residual heat keeps cooking the florets for several minutes after draining, and that is enough to take them past the point you were aiming for.
Slicing the onion thin enough
Red onion in a salad is either a background note or the entire experience, and the difference is thickness. Paper-thin slices, ideally on a mandoline, distribute through the salad. Thick slices are things you bite into. If raw onion is still too assertive, soak the slices in cold water for ten minutes and pat dry — it removes much of the sulphur bite.
The yoghurt dressing, and why not mayonnaise
The classic American broccoli salad is bound with mayonnaise and sugar and comes in around 350 kcal a serving. This version uses yoghurt with olive oil and lemon and lands at 190, with the raisins supplying the sweetness the sugar was providing. The trade is a sharper, lighter salad — genuinely different rather than a diminished copy.
Keeping it
Best within a day. The blanched broccoli holds up well but the almonds soften once dressed, so if you are making it ahead, keep them separate and add on serving.
What it is worth nutritionally
Broccoli's vitamin C is water-soluble and heat-sensitive, so the brief blanch preserves considerably more of it than boiling would. The almonds bring vitamin E and monounsaturated fat, and they are most of the 13 g of fat here — see healthy fats for why that is a reasonable place for the fat to come from.
