Tips for cooking asparagus

Check out our tips for cooking asparagus and the basics of making delicious hollandaise sauce.

You do not need to peel young, green asparagus, just snap off the dry part of the stalk.

Remove around 3 cm of the hard part of the asparagus stalk.

Ingredients

Boiling

500 g aspargus

1 tablespoon of salt

1 to 2 sugar cubes.

A dribble of lemon juice or oil or a knob of butter

Sautéing

Aspargus

Oil

Butter

Lemon juice

Salt

Pepper

HOLLANDAISE

Yolks

Butter

Lemon juice

Pepper

(Wine vinegar)

Instructions

Boiling:

Cook the asparagus until al dente. For 500 g, bring 2 litres of water up to the boil, add 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 to 2 sugar cubes. A dribble of lemon juice or oil or a knob of butter works very nicely in the water too. Place the asparagus into the water and simmer. The basic rule is that it takes around 5 minutes of cooking for green asparagus and 10 minutes for white asparagus, which is thicker. Enjoy with hollandaise sauce!

Sautéing:

Heat some rapeseed oil and butter in a pan and sauté the asparagus, turning occasionally, for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on how thick they are. Transfer the asparagus to a serving platter. Give the asparagus a spritz of lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

THE BASICS OF HOLLANDAISE SAUCE:

Separate eggs and place the yolks in a saucepan.

Melt butter in another saucepan and let it cool.

Place the yolks over a larger pot with simmering water and add lemon juice and black pepper. Begin whipping. Vigorously beat the yolks until thick and voluminous.

Remove the saucepan from the other pot and gradually add the butter in a thin stream, beating constantly.

Add some white wine vinegar if the sauce has become too thick.