A Question about Salt and Sweating

[Bakemehappy]

Any idea why we have to sweat some vegetables like onions and carrots? is it necessary or can we skip that process? I just follow procedures on the cookbook but did not find the reason for sweating and the use of salt for that matter. Some salt their fish before cooking I wonder if that has something to do with sweating too.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

The recipe I have just made (Mushroom Bisque) requires you to sweat the onions and mushrooms to obtain the juices from them and to extract their full flavour. It is one of the few recipes that I have that requires me to do this and I know it does make a difference with the overall taste in this recipe.

 

[L_B]

What does sweating the vegetables mean? That a term I never heard of before.

 

[OhioTom76]

Sweating the vegetables makes them more tender in addition to drawing their flavors out into the rest of the dish. I would never skip the sweating process when following a specific recipe, otherwise you will wind up with hard bits of stuff in your final dish. For example, some recipes for a home made tomato sauce call for first sauteing some diced carrot, onion, garlic and celery first, which becomes a base for your sauce. If you were to skip this step, then just pour in the canned tomatoes, your sauce would have all sorts of hard carrots and celery bits in it. Whereas if you had sweated them down initially, they would be soft and blend into the sauce giving it it's more desirable smooth texture.

Sweating is just basically sauteing but without letting the vegetables get much color. In other words, it would be like sauteing some diced onions, but don't let them get to the point of caramelizing and browning, which will change their flavor.

 

[Corzhens]

Pardon me but this is the first time I have encountered that sweating of vegetables. If sweating is actually sauteeing then I already know that. But using salt to sweat means sweating is another method, as in the post above, to extract the flavor of the vegetable. But anyway, vegetables are best when fresh so what we do is to cook all the other ingredients before cutting the vegetables and including it in the pot. Today our vegetable dish is squash and string beans cooked in coconut milk. It was sauteeed or sweated.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I thought it better to clarify what the difference between sweating and sautéing vegetables was, so I have done up a new thread about it here.

www.cookingbites.com/threads/difference-between-sautéing-and-sweating-vegetables.6603/