Summer is the season of fresh, beautiful bright-coloured fruits and vegetables. But how often these beautiful coloured vegetables come out as same colour after cooking? Probably none of them, right? One of the most difficult parts of cooking is to make sure each dish looks beautiful, colourful and appetising, with all the essential vitamins and minerals remaining intact in the veggies and fruits even after cooking them. Vegetables like green peas, palak (spinach), cauliflower, et al don't seem as appetising as they should be after cooking. How do we retain colour of vegetables? How do we preserve all the essential nutrients and vitamins in the vegetables? Before we tell you how to do that, let's understand why does the colour of vegetables change after cooking.
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All green leafy vegetables get their green colour from chlorophyll, which is a complex molecule present in some plant cells. While cooking, this complex molecule comes in contact with other acidic molecules of other foods or ingredients we are cooking them with; it changes or alters the colour of vegetables to light green or yellowish-green. Another factor that can alter the colour of vegetables is the cooking time. If you cook your vegetables for longer time, then the chances are that your vegetables may lose their bright green colour and turn pale. So, what do we do to protect the colour of vegetables? Here's an easy hack to retain colour of vegetables, shared by famous YouTuber Ananya Banerjee on her channel ‘Chef Ananya Banerjee'.
(Also Read: Surprise, Surprise! 8 Vegetables That Are Actually Fruits)