Why You Shouldn’t Snap the Ends Off Asparagus and Why You Should Overcook It | What’s Eating Dan?



Asparagus is such a widely popular vegetable, that even the oldest surviving cookbook features a recipe for it. Dan chats about how it’s grown, how to prepare it, and the absolute best ways to cook it.

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36 Comments

  1. i just made some for first time , i washed . pat dried added olive oil salt black pepper , pepper flakes and garlic powder and butter mixed together , added to pan with cooking paper , preheated oven 350 , cooked for 15 minutes and walla just the right crispy crunch and juicy with flavor

  2. With a sharp chef's knife start cutting about 3/4" from base (certainly above any white stalk)…cut every 3/8" on a 45 degree to the vertical stalk until you sense the softer portion …rinse with hot water to cleanse…steam with asparagus vertical in a big blue enamel camping coffee pot with only 1/2" or less of water in the bottom usually 3-4 mins…because you cut on a 45 , the base has more surface area to "hydrate"…if the asparagus bends…you overcooked…lay in a glass dish and slop on lots of butter and coarse sea salt (Himalayan) …various flavored balsamic vinegar can add or detract according to your taste

  3. As someone who's grown up in a province with ubiquitous access to world-class lobster, I genuinely don't understand how it made it to your short-list of "so delicious you just cook it in water". Lobster is incredibly mild, not super flavourful, and obnoxiously fiddly to eat. It basically tastes like 'generic crustacean'. If you're not condensing that flavour into a bisque or something, I would say it is, at best, meh. It's not objectionable, but it's also not special.
    When my grandfather was growing up his family had to bury the shells in the back yard lest anyone see them in their garbage and label them dirt-poor peasants with no better options. There are still laws on the books in the US that state a maximum number of lobster meals you can serve to penitentiary inmates. It's objectively not a very good food. I don't think I can name a single person whom I know personally that actually likes lobster. Most people around here will say something along the lines of "I'll eat it if it's presented, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it". I genuinely think the only reason so many people profess to adoring it these days is just that it costs a stupid amount. (I can get it for 5$/lb live, and, again, my province produces supposedly world-class lobster. I've seen it for sale for 40$/lb or more in coastal US areas. That's nuts.) Before the advent of canning, railroads, and clever marketing, nobody wanted lobster. It took all of those things to present it as a luxury good worthy of consideration.

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  5. I grew up in Illinois and along the train tracks we used to pick them wild. Take them home and eat them. We learned to eat the smaller ones because the thick ones are tough. Very delicious vegetable. the tuxedo of all vegetables.

  6. Hey man,
    I was tired and grumpy and not hungry at all but I knew I should eat, and I've got some asparagus in the fridge…. so I came trolling youtube to remind myself how to roast it. Saw your thumbnail and just wanted to know what you had to say about snapping and was so daunted with the prospect of sifting through 7 and a half minutes for the answer….
    But this whole thing was delightful and informative. Straightforward, no fluff. Fascinating facts, charming visuals. It actually lifted my spirits some, and I'm grateful for that. Thanks for making a great video; makes me interested to see what else you have to offer…. but later. First I gotta put some veggies in me.
    P.S. I'm a snapper, but I'll try cutting tonight.

  7. I like baking them in the oven with olive oil and parmigiana cheese and also on the stove top, anyway thank you for schooling us on how to cook and how not to cut the stems by snapping off the end 🤔🤫🥺😢🫵🏽👏🏼✌️👍

  8. Spargelfest: Florsheim, Germany. Every day driving to the air base I saw fields of spargel. Spargel is Deutsch or German doe asparagus and every year Florsheim held the “Spargelfest” in celebration of this amazing vegetable. In the fields on the outside of my town, like 3 houses down were the fields, (both a blessing and a curse during fertilizing time) were fields with all these tall rows of mounded dirt. At first I thought the farmer couldn’t grow a blade of grass until I figured out he was blanching asparagus, but we called it something else that I can’t recall.
    Anyway it was a great memory and a great time. Not sure if they still have the Spargelfest in Florsheim but if they do you should check it out!

  9. Borophyll! Thank you for that, Dan. I've been a snapper, but I'll cut next time. My parents had an asparagus garden when I was little, but they boiled it in the microwave, which I found disgusting — so I didn't like asparagus until about a decade ago when I was 30. Now I love to blanche it, toss it with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and wrap a few stalks in prosciutto. It's a great snack in the middle of the day (here's to working from home)!

  10. I cut about 1/4 inch off the cut into thirds and add them to my skillet with my already frying potatoes carrots a meat and green beans! I fry the whole in olive oil in a cast iron skillet with a little kosher salt and ground pepper with the asparagus on top they just get steamed until the last flip then onto the plate!

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