Looking for the best way to cook broccoli? We think we may have found it; after you scratch up a batch, feel free to thank us. This recipe is so good it might even convince broccoli haters to have a few bites. Now, we aren’t broccoli haters. We happen to love broccoli. We’ll eat the florets raw, we like cream of broccoli soup, we like steamed broccoli on baked potatoes — basically, we’ll eat broccoli regardless of how it’s prepared, but this recipe has them all beat.
We did modify the recipe that we found in Valentina Solfrini’s book, Naturally Vegetarian: Recipes and Stories from My Italian Family Farm. Basically, we reduced the amount of garlic by just a tad, and we skipped the part about blanching the broccoli florets. As you’ll see, the broccoli cooks for a while, so we’re not sure blanching is all that important. Feel free to blanch the broccoli in salted water, if you wish. For just the two of us, we cut the recipe in half (which is also the reason we cut back on the garlic; we didn’t want to add 1 1/2 cloves, 1 clove would be fine).
Broccoli Strascinati
Ingredients
- 2 Tbs raisins
- 1/2 Tbs brown sugar
- 1 1/2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 1 broccoli, cut into florets (about a pound)
- 2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 2 Tbs diced onion
- 2 Tbs sliced almonds for serving
Instructions
- Place raisins in a small bowl and cover with warm water. Soak for 30 minutes, drain, and squeeze out excess water.
- Add brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper, and set aside.
- Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add garlic and onions and cook until tender, about 5 minutes.
- Add broccoli and raisin mixture, and stir to coat and dissolve sugar. Reduce heat to low and cook, half covered, about 30 minutes, or until broccoli is very soft. Add small amounts of water, if needed.
- Uncover and cook for 5 minutes more, or until almost all liquid has evaporated and the broccoli is slightly caramelized.
- Serve, garnished with sliced almonds.
Ingredient discussion:
Balsamic vinegar is a tricky ingredient to buy. You can find balsamic vinegar in large bottles for a couple of dollars, but it’s not very good. And, you can find balsamic vinegar in tiny bottles that cost over $100, which is too expensive for a recipe like this. So, how do you choose? Well, in general, better balsamic vinegar is more expensive, so over a time, try a few that appeal to your price point and choose the one you like best. We happen to use Trader Joe’s Gold-label Aceto Balsamico Di Modena.
Procedure in detail:
Soak raisins. Place the raisins in a small bowl — we just used a measuring cup — and cover with warm water. The amount of water isn’t important, you just want to get them plumped up and tender. Let them soak for about 30 minutes, then drain and lightly squeeze out the excess water. We just pressed them to the bottom of the measuring cup.
Make sauce. We figured we’d just measure everything needed for the sauce into the raisins, so we could add it to the broccoli all at once when the time came. Add the brown sugar, the balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper to the raisins, and, if you wish, give it a stir. It doesn’t really matter whether you stir or not, as you’ll stir it together in the pan.
Cook onions. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add onions and garlic, and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Watch the garlic more than the onions, as burnt garlic doesn’t taste good; with all the simmering coming up, those onions will be plenty cooked when you’re ready to serve.
Simmer broccoli. Add the broccoli to the pan, along with the raisin mixture. Stir to coat and dissolve the sugar and reduce heat to low. Place a lid on the pan, slightly offset so steam can escape, and simmer until the broccoli is very soft, nearly mushy, about 30 minutes. As the broccoli cooks, stir it from time to time and add a little water, if needed.
Finish and serve. Remove the cover and cook until all the liquid has been evaporated and absorbed and the broccoli is slightly caramelized. Serve topped with slice almonds.
When we first read this recipe, we said, eww, cook broccoli for 30 minutes, or until it’s soft and mushy, but we figured that we’d at least try it. We’re glad we did. Yes, the broccoli is very soft, but it’s packed with flavors that have seeped into the florets as they cook. When we think of the recipe now, we think, yum, when do we get more broccoli, so we can make up another batch? Five stars.
