I’m slightly obsessed!

With this veggie really shoving spring into our faces, I can’t help but eat it almost every day of the week! It’s easy to cook, easy to eat, and easy to love. The only thing about it is you can only take so much of the same thing. Most of us find a way we like to eat certain foods and we cook that same recipe until we kill it…until everyone is screaming for you to stop because they know what’s coming for dinner.

So how do you keep asparagus interesting? Well here’s a couple simple ideas

#1 

Turn your asparagus into a refreshing salad!

Ingredients

• 1 bundle fresh Asparagus spears, snapped or trimmed to remove the tough ends
• 1/3 cup quinoa cooked in 1/2 cup of water with 1/2 tsp salt.
• 1 red bell pepper, Julienned
• 1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted
• 1/3 cup feta cheese
• enough Lemon Vinaigrette to dress the salad

How To

1. Bring a big pot of water to a boil and start getting your asparagus ready! Snap each spear or trim the woody end off, then using a sharp knife simply slice each spear in half length wise. (You don’t necessarily have to slice them in half, but I like it better that way!) Then when your asparagus is prepped just put it into the boiling water and blanch for about 1 minute. Blanching is just a fancy word for quickly boiling. After the minute is up you want to “shock” the asparagus in an ice bath, which is just a bunch of ice water in a bowl. This will stop the cooking and cool down the asparagus getting it ready for the salad. Pat the spears dry, and then add them to a bowl to assemble the salad!
2. Cook your quinoa until tender and all of the water has been absorbed, then allow it to cool. You can rinse it in ice water to quickly cool it off. Then add it into the bowl with the asparagus.
3. You have a couple of options with the red pepper after you thinly slice it. You can quickly sauté it with a bit of olive oil for some added flavor, roast it with a bit of olive oil at 425 degrees for about 7 minutes, or leave it raw in the salad. I personally like it roasted, but feel free to do whatever you would like. Once it’s prepared how you want, (let it cool if it’s been cooked) put it into the salad bowl!
4. Now you can toast the almonds, which it extremely simple! Using a small sauté pan, just allow the almonds to toast until they turn a golden color and you can easily smell them. I do this on medium high heat, with no oil in the pan. Careful because they can go from perfectly toasted to burnt in no time!
5. To toss the salad just add the almonds in along with the feta cheese and then lightly dress with the lemon vinaigrette. This salad is best served the same day it’s made, but if you do make it ahead of time, just keep the feta, almonds, and vinaigrette separate until serving time.

The sky is the limit when turning your asparagus into a salad. You can add any ingredients you would like and create your own unique salad. Make sure to share your pictures with me if you make something!

If you have questions about this recipe tweet me or leave a comment below!

#2

Asparagus Frozen Yogurt!!

Yea…I went there. And honestly I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it, but man was I wrong! The asparagus flavor just excites your taste buds and boggles your mind. I can’t wait for you to try this out! Plus it’s crazy easy to make…and you can always make it dairy free! One of my tricks for jazzing up ice cream is buying a plain fat-free and no sugar added frozen yogurt…then adding great flavors to it. Strawberry rhubarb, sweet potato or beet ice creams are just a few ingredients away when you steal my tip.

Ingredients

• 2 cups fat-free, no sugar added frozen yogurt. (to make this dairy free, just substitute almond or coconut milk ice cream)
• 1 bundle fresh Asparagus spears
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt (You can use almond or coconut yogurt)

1. Start by putting the 2 cups of frozen yogurt into a mixing bowl. Allow it to soften while you prep your asparagus!
2. In this recipe I only use the top 3-4 inches of the asparagus to make sure they are extremely tender. So slice your asparagus spears and blanch them just like in the recipe above! That means drop them in boiling water for about 1 minute, and then move them to an ice bath to stop the cooking process. Next just pat them dry once you take them out of the ice bath and add them to your blender or food processor.
3. Add the yogurt to the asparagus in the blender or food processor and puree until it’s nice and smooth. To make the puree extremely smooth you can press it through a sieve after your done mixing!
4. Now just add the asparagus mixture to the frozen softened yogurt and mix well! You can easily just swirl the asparagus mixture into it as well to create a white on green look with your ice cream. Taste the asparagus frozen yogurt mixture before you put it into the freezer. If it’s too strong of a flavor for you, just add a bit more frozen yogurt to mellow it out. Then let it freeze back up for a couple of hours and serve!

If I were you I would feed this ice cream to our friend and have them guess what the flavor is.

What are your favorite asparagus recipes?

One of my favorite things to do is just simply roast the spears. I love the two recipes above, but there is almost nothing better than asparagus lightly coated in olive oil, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and lemon zest, then roasted at 425 for 7-10 minutes. Yep there’s a little bonus recipe for you. Finish them off with a bit of fresh lemon juice and YES! delicious.

Talk to you all soon! Enjoy your asparagus!  (we could get into the whole smelly pee thing…but thats another blog. and it’s gross)