Blanch
A culinary technique in which food is plunged in boiling water for a brief moment then quickly removed. Often times the food is transferred to ice water to stop the cooking process. Blanching nuts, peaches, tomatoes, etc. allows for easy skin removal, decreases the bitterness of citrus zests, and gives certain vegetables a bright green color.

from: YumSugar

Why Blanch Vegetables?

Blanching destroys the enzymes in vegetables that makes them lose their flavor and more importantly their nutritional value. In other words, blanching gets rid of the things that make vegetables bland and boring and not as healthy as we’d wish them to be. (more…)