The Weeknight Kitchen · The Everyday Side · Serves 4

Simple Asparagus,
Any Way

Name: Simple Asparagus, Any Way
Total time: 12 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 450 g asparagus; 30 g unsalted butter; 20 ml extra-virgin olive oil; 4 g Diamond Crystal kosher salt; 1 g black pepper; 10 ml fresh lemon juice

Blanched, roasted, or grilled — bright-green asparagus with the two cues that matter: where to cut it, and when to stop.

~12 min total 5 min prep 3 ways method

Spoon cost

Time ●○○○○ Anytime

VegetarianGluten-Free

Servingsamounts scale to match

Units

Ingredients

Bend, don't chop — and pull it a shade before you think it's done. Hold a spear at both ends and bend it: it snaps exactly where the woody part ends, which is different for every bunch. Then watch the color. Asparagus goes vivid green when it's ready and dull olive about ninety seconds later, and there is no getting the green back. Crisp-tender, with a little resistance in the middle, is the target.

Method

Cook's notes

Thickness decides the method. Pencil-thin spears burn before they cook on a grill — blanch those. Thick spears are the ones worth roasting or grilling, and they benefit from having the bottom third peeled.

Blanch ahead if you are cooking something else at the last minute. Boil the spears, drop them straight into ice water to stop the cooking, drain, and hold them on a towel. Reheat in the butter for a minute when you are ready to plate — this is how you get asparagus onto a plate that also has something fussier on it.

Salt the water like pasta water. Blanching is the one chance the inside of the spear has to be seasoned.

Storage: stand the bunch upright in an inch of water in the fridge, like flowers, with a bag over the tops. It stays crisp for days that way and goes limp in a day loose in the drawer.

What it goes with: it sits beside almost anything, but it is especially good with brown-butter scallops — reheat the blanched spears in the same pan right before the butter browns.

Easier, if you like

Microwave-steam it — spears in a covered dish with a splash of water, 2 to 3 minutes, then butter and salt. Not as pretty as roasting, and a genuinely fine side.
Skip the peeling unless the spears are very thick. On medium spears the bend-and-snap alone removes everything woody.

Vegetarian and gluten-free; vegan with one swap

Vegan / dairy-free: use olive oil in place of the butter in the blanched version too, or a plant butter — Miyoko's Cultured Vegan Butter, in the refrigerated butter case, browns closest to the real thing.

Gluten-free: naturally gluten-free.

Flavor add-ons: grated parmesan over the roasted version (not vegan), toasted almonds, a grated garlic clove in the butter, or lemon zest over any of the three.