On the Food network they boil potatoes, but they poach carrots. They poach turkey, but they boil eggs. They sauté’ onions, but they fry eggs in the same pan. Likewise, they fry hash browns, but they sauté’ onions in the same pan before adding the potatoes.
I can go on for days.
You’re correct but it begs the question, why the hell would they poach carrots? If any vegetable can stand up to boiling it’s a carrot. Blanching I could see, (that’s a 2 minute dunk in boiling water, OP, with a quick cooldown) if you wanted to pre-cook them so they wouldn’t be harder than everything else. Maybe they were just being poncy.
Firstly, I appreciate you breaking it down! I knew they were different terms, but never really knew them outside of the standard ‘poached eggs’.
Secondly, soggy carrots can get bent. If it doesn’t crunch it’s not for me.
Can’t stand soggy carrots. I can eat them in soup, but it’s not my favorite. I much prefer roasted or stir fried. Actually most veggies, I prefer that way.
Poaching in olive oil, butter, wine, etc would give a different flavor. I agree that water poached carrots would be just a slower way to cook carrots than boiling them.
Poaching in oil or butter sounds like a long way to saute them, especially when it takes sooooo long that you take your eyes off for a minute and they start browning.
If you keep your oil at the right temp (below boiling) the thing you’re cooking won’t ever brown. You get it cooked through evenly and infused with flavor from the poaching liquid. The texture and flavor will be much more like a boiled veggie than a sauted one. And usually if you’re poaching veggies you leave them in much larger chunks than you would saute - like even a whole carrot wouldn’t be weird.
