Why you should plunge food into ice (ice baby)

Become a better cook with this simple technique.

Put your vegetables in a bath of icy water before you fry them. Source: Getty Images

There are some simple things that can improve your cooking game. Chinese cooks blanch their vegetables before using them in stir-fries so they keep their crunch. Koreans wash wheat noodles called bibim guksuI for a chewy and bouncy texture. And some food benefits from an ice bath.

Andrea Rigodanza, executive chef at The Essoign Club in Melbourne, says an ice bath is critical to prepare some dishes.

"After blanching vegetables, to stop them from cooking, I use an ice-water bath to cool them down," says Rigodanza. "This not only adds to the texture of the vegetable but it also stops it from changing colour and works particularly well for green-coloured vegetables."

Stir-fried kang kong, also known as water spinach. Source: PxHere

Rigodanza says this technique works for a range of dishes. "When boiling eggs, [an ice bath helps to] cool things quickly so it doesn't overcook and it makes them a lot easier to peel with the extreme temperature shock."

This not only adds to the texture of the vegetable but it also stops it from changing colour.

The Italian-born chef also puts lobsters in icy water to stop the meat from becoming chewy.

He says he loves to use this technique with his family's pasta recipes, such as gnocchi.

"I use an ice-water bath when making gnocchi, since they don't hold well raw in the fridge."

Another secret is to only add a little flour to gnocchi. "Rather than adding a lot of extra flour to stop them from sticking, which is then absorbed into the gnocchi, pre-boiling the gnocchi and shocking them in water helps create large batches of gnocchi at one time.

"We usually boil them before service and use an ice-water bath to cool them down very quickly before freezing or reheating. This also gives the gnocchi extra shelf life."

Rigodanza says plunging gnocchi in icy water is also a safety precaution.

"Using this technique, I avoid overcooking the gnocchi but more importantly, stop any possibilities of food poisoning – they go from 100 degrees Celsius to 0 degrees Celsius without staying in the temperature danger zone where bacteria grow much faster. Let's not forget, ricotta gnocchi contains eggs and cheese."

This is what Rigodanza's family did at their restaurant. "After I left my family's restaurant, I saw [this same technique] done the same way in both little family restaurants, as well as big fine-dining Michelin restaurants."

Rigodanza is on to something. The temperature danger zone (food at between about 5-60 degrees celsius) is more prone to bacteria growing to unsafe amounts.

Chef Duncan Welgemoed of the South African restaurant Africola in Adelaide, supports putting some food in icy water, too.

"At Africola we use ice baths to refresh our vegetables after blanching to immediately stop the vegetable from cooking any further, it also helps inactivate enzymes that cause discolouration and oxidisation."

Welgemoed loves putting crudités in ice baths. Keeping vegetables like radishes, carrots and fennel in an ice bath keeps them crunchy and colourful.

Meanwhile, cooling a custard over an ice bath prevents clumps. But what about using an ice bath to make chicken stock? Welgemoed says yes.

"Using ice to shock a stock is when the stock is at peak flavour during the cooking process," he explains. "[We then] pass the stock into a large bowl over ice and that rapid cooling means you can preserve the freshness in flavour so nothing is lost in the cooling."

Using ice to shock a stock is when the stock is at peak flavour during the cooking process.

Another benefit is that you can more easily retrieve any fat deposits in the stock which improves its clarity. 

"But, that being said, in a restaurant, where we are making huge batches of stock, like 50 litres, the stock can stay hot for a long time and taste stale, so this process helps," says Welgemoed.

Gopikrishna Govindasamy of Searz Caffi in Melbourne, says that he uses an ice bath for Singaporean Hainanese chicken and stock.

"This is normally done in the last stage of the stock before reduction. After removing the bones and veg I bring the stock to a low temperature of max 50 degrees, so the ice does not melt too fast," says Govindasamy. 

"I then add in bags of ice and this shocks the fat floating on the top and it sticks to the ice cubes. We then use a chinois or sieve to remove the ice/fat cubes."

Shocking your body in an ice bath in the Atlantic Ocean is said to be good for you. It turns out it can be valuable for your vegetables, eggs and custard too.