Belgian Endive Serving Tips – Harvest to Table

Belgian endive is frequently served raw added to winter salads or braised and served with a white sauce. Belgian endive can also be steamed, parboiled, and able in a gratin.

The sparsely wrapped creamy white leaves of Belgian endive form an organization elongated, spear-shaped middle. The leaves are moderately smelly. 

Belgian endive is harvested autumn by the use of spring.

Belgian endive is also known as French endive, witloof, chicory, and witloof chicory.

How to Make a choice Belgian Endive

• Make a choice endive spears which may also be tightly closed, blank, shiny, and swollen.
• White endive can be moderately yellow-tinged at the leaf edges.
• Leaves of red California endive can be deep red color.
• Avoid endive spears which may also be open, wilted, or browning at the leaf tips.

How to Store Belgian Endive

• Wrap endive in a moist paper towel and place it in a plastic bag inside the refrigerator. It will keep for up to 5 days.

How to Prep Belgian Endive

• Quicker than serving or cooking, wipe the outer leaves of the endive spear with a moist material. You don’t need to wash or soak the spear in water; it’s going to make it further bitter tasting.
• Pull off and discard outer leaves; trim the ground immediately all the way through; reduce out about 1 inch of the cone-shaped core (it’s very bitter-tasting), then quarter or halve the heads.

Belgian Endive Serving Pointers

• Serve endive raw or cooked.
• Combine raw endive in salads with other greens sprinkled with vinaigrette.
• Combine raw endive with beets, apples, pears, walnuts, blue cheese, and orange or grapefruit quarters for a winter salad. (Stability the bitterness with something sweet.)

Belgian Endive Cooking Pointers

• Steam endive and serve with béchamel sauce or top with butter and season with herbs.
• Parboil endive then wrap each spear in ham, cover with cheese sauce, and bake.
• Braise entire or quartered white endive spears in a mixture of butter, chicken or veal stock, white wine, and just a bit sugar.

How to Steam Belgian Endive

1. Steam entire or quartered.
2. Add a few inches of water to a pot then insert a steamer basket. The water must not touch the bottom of the steamer basket.
3. Ship the water to a simmer over medium-high heat.
4. Add the endive and cover.
5. Steam for 4 to 5 minutes, until cushy.

How to Parboil Belgian Endive

1. Use tongs to dip all of the endive in boiling water for more or less 30 seconds
2. Transfer to cold water to stop the cooking.
3. Dry the leaves with a kitchen towel or paper towels

How to Braise Belgian Endive

1. Braise entire or quartered.
2. Coat a large skillet with unsalted butter or olive oil.
3. Add the endive and stir over medium heat until it turns mild brown around the edges.
4. Add salt, pepper evenly, and 1 cup of stock or white wine.
5. Quilt the skillet tightly and simmer until the endive is simply cushy about 30 minutes.

Belgian Endive Nutrition

• Endive is a superb provide of folic acid, potassium and contains nutrition C.

How Belgian Endive in Grown

• Endive is not wholly a gift of nature on the other hand a partially human invention.
• White Belgian endive starts life as wild chicory. Wild chicory—which appears to be something like dandelion–begins its transformation into endive in autumn when its green leaves are trimmed away and the roots are replanted in the dead of night so that the leaves that re-grow are blanched white. As the new leaves broaden, they are careworn to broaden every vertical and compact as the new growth is mounded with soil, sand, or sawdust and essentially professional as a shoot.
• In a lot of weeks, the new growth measures from 4 to 8 inches (10-20 cm) in length and a couple of inches (5 cm) in diameter, and the dark green leaves and bitter taste of wild chicory are revamped into the white-leaved and mild-flavored endive.

Further About Belgian Endive

• Belgian endive is not wholly a advent of nature. In about 1850, an observant farmer with regards to Brussels noticed that wild chicory roots grew elongated when grown in every warmth and dark. Later, a Belgian botanist later stepped ahead upon this observation to develop a cultivation process that produced the fashionable shoot-like chicory referred to as endive.
• On account of wild chicory first was white endive in Belgium, it is ceaselessly known as Belgian endive.
• On account of this cultivated vegetable was once first introduced to business at Les Halles—the well known produce market in Paris, it is ceaselessly known as French endive.
• And because this cultivated chicory has white leaves, it is ceaselessly known as witloof, the Flemish word that means “white leaf”.
• In recent years, a pass between Belgian endive and radicchio—red-leafed chicory—has been marketed as California red endive.

The botanical identify of endive is Cichorium intybus.