Vegetable Preparation - Make Broccoli Florettes

Hello, Im Robert Nassar from Dinner Done. Were talking about basic vegetable prep today. Right now were going to show you how to deal with broccoli. Were going to assume that youve washed your broccoli under cold running water. It should never be warm or hot water that you wash your vegetables like broccoli and others in, use cold running water. Once youve done that, get rid of these little leaves that are here on the side, just by pulling them, like so. What were going to do now is were going to get what they call the crowns or the florets of the broccoli. Using your cutting board that has a towel underneath it so that it doesnt slip, and a knife, lay your broccoli down, make a first cut to where you get most of the branches, but not yet separate, if you will. Now weve got a little bit more manageable piece of broccoli to deal with. Youre not going to really need this unless you plan to puree it for a soup or for a cream of broccoli of some sort. Were going to assume youre not going to need it today. Next youre going to notice the broccoli seems to look almost like several tress, if you will, or crowns or florets growing together. So, to get them into individual pieces, we first lay our broccoli down on our cutting board, and cutting as close as we can while still leaving some of the stock, we will manage to separate most of them. Heres one that came apart already. For the rest, as you can see theyre still joined at the base, and now its very simple. Pick them off one by one to a size that you would like to have. If you would like to keep bigger chunks of florets together, you can leave them this size, or keep peeling them off until you feel youve got what you want. For the rest of these I could probably just go ahead and cut a little bit more off of the trunk, and now continue to take the florets apart. Thats how you get broccoli florets.