How to Cook Chicory | Chicory Recipes

Chicory is small stalks of leafy vegetables that are grown in the dark. This vegetable can be eaten raw or cooked. We find the taste bitter, but most of the bitterness has been grown from it. Often raw chicory is eaten with mandarins or chicory cooked with a sauce.

How to Cook Chicory? In this blog, you can read in which ways you can cook chicory, such as in the microwave or with milk. You can also read how to cook chicory for a baby and why you should blanch chicory. Enough reasons to read how to cook chicory. 

If you want to know how to prepare chicory further, you can read our blog ‘ How to clean and prepare chicory? ‘ read. It explains how to clean, stir-fry, stew, bake and grill chicory.

How to Cook Chicory?

When you want to cook chicory, you have a number of stumps in front of you. You should always take more of chicory because chicory shrinks a lot when you cook it. Below is the method of cooking chicory.

1. Have your supplies ready, such as a sharp knife, cutting board and a pan of water, to put the sliced ​​chicory in.
2. Hold one stump well and cut the chicory into strips from the top. I make the strips about a centimeter thick
3. Do not cut the praise all the way to the bottom because the base is hard and this is considered the bitter part. About 2 to 3 cm should remain. You throw the ass away.
4. Put the chicory in the pan with water and possibly some salt and put it on the heat source.
5. Let the water boil for 12 to 15 minutes and then drain the chicory in a colander.
6. Drain the chicory well because otherwise there will be too much water on your plate and that will not eat well. Serve the chicory.

This is the basic way of cooking chicory. Now the chicory can be eaten or further processed or seasoned.

How long to cook chicory?

Chicory Cooking Sauce

Above you can read how to cook chicory and a sauce is always delicious. There are different types of sauces that you can make with chicory. A pack from the store (which contains a lot of salt) or you can make it yourself in no time. You immediately determine what you eat and how healthy it is.

It takes about 10 minutes to make the sauce from the moment everything is ready. 

Below are 2 types of sauces:

1. Bechamel sauce with broth
2. Bechamel sauce with vegetable milk

Chicory Bechamel Sauce With Bouillon

The first sauce is based on a stock. This gives more spice and spiciness to the bitter chicory. What do you need:

• 20 grams of flour
• 20 grams of vegetable butter
• 200 ml garden herb stock or vegetable stock

The amount of stock cubes is indicated on the package. I always use half a block more for more flavor, but that’s personal. Taste to see if you find the stock spicy enough and if not add another piece of stock cube.  

How do you proceed:

1. In a saucepan or saucepan, melt the butter over a low heat.
2. Add all the flour and stir well until all the flour is incorporated into the butter. Stir well! This has now become a roux.
3. Bake the roux for 3 minutes, otherwise the roux will still taste like flour. Keep stirring. after 3 minutes the roux is done.
4. Now use a long ladle or whisk otherwise you will burn your hands. It can get quite steamy with the next operation.
5. Gradually add the garden herb stock and stir the stock through the roux so that it becomes a sauce. Keep stirring and add some more stock. Keep stirring quickly and well until all the stock is used up.
6. When all the stock has been added you have a nice, smooth and delicious sauce.
7. Stir this sauce through the cooked chicory or pour some over the chicory. It’s just what you want.

Enjoy your meal!

Chicory Bechamel Sauce With Milk

The second sauce is a white sauce based on vegetable milk. This gives your cooked chicory a creamy taste that tastes great with the chicory. For this second example you will need the following.

• 20 grams of flour
• 20 grams of vegetable butter
• 200 ml plant-based milk
• Pinch salt and pepper
• Nutmeg

1. In a saucepan or saucepan, melt the butter over a low heat.
2. Add all the flour and stir well until all the flour is incorporated into the butter. Stir well! This has now become a roux.
3. Bake the roux for 3 minutes. Keep stirring!
4. Now use a ladle or whisk to stir otherwise you may burn your hands.
5. Now add the vegetable milk, little by little and keep stirring until you have a creamy sauce without lumps. When you do have this, you have to stir well and ‘break’ the lumps.
6. Now add some salt and pepper and some nutmeg and stir to mix well.
7. Taste what you think and add some spice if necessary.
8. Pour this sauce through the chicory or pour a little on your plate with the chicory.

Enjoy your meal! 

Chicory Cooking In Microwave

We are very used to cooking in a pan with water, while cooking in the microwave is also an option. This is quick and easy. See here how this is possible:

1. Use a microwave dish and a small amount of water.
2. Wash the chicory and remove any dry leaves.
3. If you want, you can drill into the bottom of the chicory with an apple corer and remove the ‘bitter’ part. This is about 2 to 3 centimeters.
4. Place this chicory in the microwave dish with water and cover with microwave foil or lid of the dish. Put all the butts out, they are the hardest and will cook well.
5. Set the microwave to 850 Watt and set the time to 6 minutes or set the microwave to 750 Watt and the time to 8 minutes. It depends on the microwave how high it can go.
6. After the cooking time, pierce the chicory with a skewer or something similar and feel whether it goes in and out easily. Otherwise, let it run in the microwave for a while.
7. Remove the chicory from the dish and let it drain in the colander.
8. Season the chicory as you like or make a sauce with it.

If you want to know how to season chicory, look here.

Chicory Cooking In Oven

If you want to make chicory from the oven, you can cook the chicory for a while before it goes into the oven. You can read here how that works.

1. Put a pan with water on and let the water boil.
2. Clean the chicory by running it under the tap for a while and remove the leaves that have dry edges.
3. Cut the chicory in half lengthwise and remove the bitter part if necessary (from the bottom, 2 cm upwards). Leave the butt itself, otherwise you will have all loose leaves.
4. Place the chicory in the boiling water and let it simmer for 3 to 5 minutes. When you let the water boil, the leaves will come loose.
5. Remove the chicory with a slotted spoon and let it drain in a colander. Make sure that the chicory drains well otherwise you will have a lot of water in your baking dish. Place the head of the praise down in the colander with the open side down and they will drain well.

Now make the casserole you plan to make. There are plenty of options so go wild and enjoy your meal.

Chicory Cooking For Baby

Cooking chicory for your baby can also be delicious when you put an apple through the chicory. Below is a delicious baby snack with chicory and apple.

• 150 grams of potatoes
• 1 boiled chicory without salt.
• 2 sweet apples

Preparation method:

1. Place a pan with plenty of water on the heat source.
2. Peel the potatoes, cut them into small pieces and add them to the boiling water. Put the lid on the pan and reduce the heat source.
3. Cut the chicory into thin strips and the apple into small cubes.
4. Add the apple and chicory to the potatoes and stir briefly.
5. After 10 minutes everything is cooked (taste it), drain it in the colander.
6. Return the vegetables and apples to the pan and puree with a stick blender or food processor.
7. Add a little milk to make it smoother.

The apples ensure that the bitter taste is replaced by the slightly sweetness of the apples.

Chicory Cooking with Milk

If you find that the chicory tastes bitter after cooking, you can add a dash of milk to the water during cooking. This takes away some of the bitterness. Cook the chicory for about 13 minutes. Taste to see if you think it’s cooked enough. For how to cook the chicory, see the chapter ‘How to cook chicory?’ at the top of this blog.

Chicory Cooking Blanching

Blanch chicory before freezing it or making an oven dish. The reason for blanching is that you kill bacteria and fungi that may be on the chicory. The color of the vegetable is also better preserved.

How do you blanch chicory?

1. Put a pan with water on and let it boil.
2. Clean the chicory and remove old leaves.
3. Cut the chicory into strips or in half and place in the boiling water.
4. Set a timer for 3 minutes and remove the chicory immediately. This is called blanching.
5. When freezing the chicory, immediately after it comes out of the hot water, place the chicory in ice-cold water to stop the cooking.
6. When blanching the praise for a casserole, of course, you don’t need to refrigerate it.
7. Then drain the praise well.
8. Freeze it or make the casserole.

As you can see, you can cook or cook with praise in various ways. Enjoy your meal!

Do you have any cooked or fresh chicory left after all this, read our blog ‘ How to store chicory? ‘, because throwing away is not necessary.