Broccoli Sauce

Help me perfect my broccoli sauce. I've been making it for the last month or two to put on pastas, chicken, and other foods which typically require a marinara sauce as it's a healthier alternative and tastes great to boot. Here's the run down of how I'm making it so far. It's a simple recipe with few ingredients.

3 bunches of heads & stems
3 gloves garlic
1 leek, stock only no green
1 tbsp lemon zest
1 cup chicken stock (or cooking liquid)
salt and pepper to taste

Essentially you just cook the broccoli to tender then stick everything in a blender. It comes out great, but I feel there's potential here I'm missing.

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yum

why make sauce ?

just toss steamed broccoli with butter, lemon, and salt and it is great.

you can then add it on pasta that is tossed with butter, salt, and parmesean.

This is a super low-calorie sauce, and I appreciate that, but remember that fat DOES carry flavor. That being said, a little goes a long way. Throw in a little bit of cheese or butter/olive oil/leftover bacon grease/whatever and I think you'll be surprised.

>why make sauce ?

For convenience. Make it on Sunday and it lasts me the entire week. Otherwise I'd be cooking broccoli nightly as it doesn't keep well in the fridge while it's still whole after being cooked.

I'm not opposed to adding some type of fat, but it would have to be a healthier variety for this particular recipe. I've got dishes that require all kinds of fatty goodness, I'm trying to work on some now that don't require much or any since I've been dieting from the start of the new year. Should meet my weight loss goal by may or june.

get some red pepper flakes in there.

not that user, but I admire your dedication. I hope you won't mind me pointing out that a tablespoon of bacon grease or butter per week is not going to be significantly worse for you than a tablespoon of olive oil. and that will probably be all it takes to impart a good flavour to the sauce unless you're going through a gallon of sauce per week.

also good idea. doesn't have to be much either, just a mild heat similar to what you'd get with black or white pepper. just tastes a bit different.

Not sure how well nutritional yeast would go with this but it usually fares well with vegan pasta recipes as it's their subs for msg/parmesan cheese and its low in calories. They also use soaked cashews/nuts to help with getting a creamier flavor in vegan pasta sauces. Could try a little bit of nuts next time if you wanna try out a healthier fat/emulsifier when you blend it next time. Raw cashews/almonds that have been soaked don't have much flavor but give a pretty creamy mouthfeel. Now that I think about it, your brocoli sauce is probably a variant of one of the more popular vegan cream sauces that use cauliflower instead. Sometimes roasted. Could try roasting your brocolli next time for more flavor or just trying cauliflower.

>black/white pepper
>heat
Whitebois

fuck off back to pol fucknugget

>Sometimes roasted

I like that idea. I'll give that a go next batch.

margarine tbqh

Smoked paprika and parmesan cheese?

You can try making your own ghee. It gets all of the milk solids out of the butter and adds a little bit of nutty flavor.

>marinara sauce
>unhealthy

what the fuck are you putting in your sauce? it's literally just tomatoes and spices

>it's a healthier alternative
How so?

Needs anchovies, lots of them

I'm stealing this from you OP, it sounds good. Will try adding an egg, chili flakes, smoked paprika or parmesan to see how it fares.

No point in adding stock if you are already boiling broccoli, add some tablespoon of pasta water if you want to smoothen the sauce, just add Evo Oil and grated Pecorino cheese in the mixer.

i think its cool what youre doing with the healthy sauce but you put it over pasta.... which is not healthy in the least and voids the purpose

if you put it over another vegetable then were talking

See: Lectins

I wanted to make something similar. And get this. THE GROCERY STORE HAD NO GARLIC.
WHAT
THE
FUCK

>Lectins

lmao ok kid

I would cook the broccoli in the pasta water. When draining pasta and broccoli I'd reserve some of the cooking liquid. Then really quickly toss the broccoli into a blender with olive oil, salt, pepper, a very little chopped garlic and pulse while adding the reserved cooking liquid slowly until it turns into a sauce. Then I'd get that sauce on to the pasta as quickly as possible. You can do the same thing with cauliflower or white asparagus, but leave out the pepper.

What's for dinner tonight, another McChicken?

how is plain pasta not healthy

Whole grain pasta is fine.
Processed flour pastas are the unhealthy stuff.

youtube.com/watch?v=KT7W9oJP6BI

What we seem to be circling around on here is "make it a pesto."

For full flavor/nutrition benefit vs. caloric cost I'd go with cheese. Something old and sharp so you can use a very small amount of it. Plus, that way you're not just adding fat, but protein, too.

Whole grain pasta tastes like cardboard. I'd rather eat a smaller portion of the regular stuff or not eat it at all.

Maybe you're cooking it incorrectly?

You need to imbue yourself in the whole grain flavor, and embrace the natural taste to make the most of it. I boil my whole grain pastas with a bullion cube to ingrain some additional flavor to them. When topped with a sauce and whatever additional post-plating additives, you really can't even distinguish the natural flavor of the whole grain taste anymore. What little flavor of it is left I simply attribute to another level of flavor of the overall dish.

>the regular stuff

Whole grain is technically the regular stuff. Everything else is processed beyond belief.