Athletes in the Kitchen: How to Prep Superfood Veggies Ep 15

I think the main takeaway is the less time you cook it for, the more nutrients it's going to retain. However, if overcooking it is the only way that you'll eat it, please continue to do that because they're all very important and all very healthy for you regardless.

Welcome to the Find Your Edge podcast. Get ready to dive into all things training, nutrition, recovery, and more. Whether you're a new or experienced endurance athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone who just wants to improve your health and fitness, this podcast is for you. I'm Chris Newport, founder, head coach, registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, and certified personal trainer with the Endurance Edge and the Fueling Edge. With more than 20 years experience in the fitness industry, 18 years in multi-sport, and over 10 years as a sports nutritionist, I'm speaking with athletes and experts about key actionable steps you can take to reach and sustain peak performance and health. Let's do it. Welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am your host, Chris Newport, and we are in for another episode of Athletes in the Kitchen with the Fueling Edge chef, Jon Kohler. Welcome back.

Hey, Chris. Thanks. Great to be here again.

I love cooking. I love food. I'm so glad we're doing this. I hope everybody else does too. If you guys have feedback for us, please let us know because I think we could sit here all day and talk about food. At least I could.

Absolutely. This is like heaven.

Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So today we are talking all about the crucifer. So what the heck is a crucifer? So it is basically a family of vegetables that are anti-carcinogenic. They have anti-carcinogenic superpowers like sulforaphanes and all these like fabulous technical terms that are wonderful for our health. These guys are the ones when you overcook them, they stink because that's all the wonderful sulfur that is going bye-bye instead of in our bodies, it's out into the air. So for example, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, collards, 'cause we are in the South. So that is all part of our, we try to have our folks eat a brassica a day because it keeps the doctor away. So how, what are some good ways of preparing it? Let's, let's maybe start with like our lowest hanging fruit. I feel like most people can kind of adapt to like broccoli and cauliflower. So, John, what do we do? Let's start with broccoli. What do we do with broccoli?

Well, Chris, I think for me, the key to cooking any crucifer is to not cook it if we don't have to. That is going to be the way that you get the most health benefits out of it. You get the most nutrients and minerals, and it's going to give you the, the best effects for your, your body. When I do cook them, if I am serving them on a dish or serving them hot, a minimal cooking and short time is always best. Again, a lot of the things that you smell when you cook these, or if you boil them, you're seeing the water turn colors, these are their minerals and their vitamins and all their nutrients, they're leaching out.

So unless you plan on drinking that water.

Then you're really losing a lot of what you're paying for, which are those awesome nutrients. So for me cooking them, what I'll do is I'll try and steam them. I like my vegetables usually al dente. I know a lot of people do like theirs more well done and for lack of a better term, mushy. And that's fine too. You know, it's better to eat mushy vegetables than not eat vegetables at all.

This is true. This is true.

You know, keep doing that if that's the way that the only way you enjoy them, maybe try and cook them a little bit less next time. See if you like it. Maybe try and ease yourself into it. But again, the less cooked is going to be better. So a little bit of steam until a level that you're comfortable with, roasting them, quickly roasting them with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. You know, if you like dairy, some shredded Parmesan cheese on there before you roast them up is always really tasty, and you're not really ruining the health benefits of the vegetable by just using a little bit of that.

All right, so we got it steamed, maybe lightly blanched, roasted, raw. We were talking before the show about a broccoli slaw and what do you do with broccoli when you, like, how do you purchase it? And then what do you do with the heads and with the stems?

So purchasing broccoli, I'm always looking for, I like to purchase the bunches of broccoli that have the stem and the nice leafy head. If you're not into the stems, then you can always just buy the broccoli crowns. And what you're looking for when you're purchasing broccoli is broccoli that's got a tight, like well-formed bunch or, you know, the florets on top. If those are starting to get kind of soft or, you know, if you push your—

Yellow.

Yellow. If you push your finger into it, it doesn't bounce right back out, then you want to stay away from that broccoli because it's going to be older. Even if it's a little bit purple or blue, that's, that's also really good, that dark green. But once you're getting into that bright, brightish green or the yellows, then you're going to want to stay away from that. When I bring my broccoli home, I like to chop off the bottom ends of the stem, just like, you know, a quarter inch to a half inch up to get rid of that oxidized part. And then I'll take the stems and I'll take the, the heads, the leafy part, and I'll cut them off and separate them. And in order to get nice florets, what I'll do is I'll score the bottom of the leafy part and then I'll hand break them apart. And that kind of, instead of cutting through the actual leafy part, that'll make it break up and actually look nicer into the florets.

Okay, hang on. So I've been doing it wrong all these years. Walk me through that again. So we get our head of broccoli and then flip it over so the florets are down and the stem part is up. Yeah. And then we just slice through it like you were saying, score like—

Yes. You slice 2/3 of the way through it and then you're going to pull it apart. How about that?

I've been nearly cutting my fingers off all these years trying to chop up a broccoli crown. Yeah.

And then you'll notice you don't lose a lot of those little tiny parts of the florets that always come apart when you're— cutting through that part, if you pull them apart, those stay together a lot better as well. So you're not wasting as much.

Cool.

And then for the stem, I like to slice mine about a quarter inch thick. And when I steam it, I've got small children. So what I'll do is I'll steam it all together and I'll give them the florets and I eat the stem. Saves a little bit of money, but I also like the crunch of the stem. Those stems can also be julienned up and made into broccoli slaw. Basically very similar to a cabbage slaw. You just use the broccoli, maybe some cabbage.

So I'm lazy. Can I put that in the food processor?

Absolutely. Throw it into a food processor, chop it up. If you've got the attachment that does the shredding, you can shred it in there. You could even use a cheese grater. That will work as well. And then add some, like I said, maybe some shredded up cabbage, or you could take Brussels sprouts, shred those up, add those as well, and then make just, basically like a coleslaw out of it, same ingredients. And, you know, just it's got broccoli in it as well.

So give us an example of some flavors you would like. I'm assuming an oil, a vinegar, and maybe some spices.

Absolutely. So, you know, oil, vinegar, spices. You know, I might use some mustard seed or some thyme. The vinegar, I would like probably an apple cider vinegar, perhaps a champagne vinegar. Red wine vinegar. You know, you could also use some prepared something like an Italian dressing that's store-bought and prepared. You could use the coleslaw dressing that's already prepared, or if you want to make your own, you know, just some mayonnaise, some apple cider vinegar, celery seed, mustard seed, and salt and pepper. And then, you know, add honey to your liking to get a little bit more sweet in there.

And then just kind of— and then just Like we've got mason jars at home, so I would think mix all that and shake it up in a mason jar. Or do we like whip it or?

You know, whatever works for you. I actually just take the slaw and I start adding my ingredients right to that.

Okay.

So, you know, I'll just throw some mayonnaise on there.

You just gave me permission to be even more lazy.

There you go. One bowl. One bowl is all you need.

One bowl broccoli slaw. So ACV, celery seed, mustard seed, maybe a little bit of mayo.

A little bit of mayo. Maybe some Dijon mustard or some whole grain mustard as well. And then I know this is the South and we like things sweet down here, so—

So honey.

A whole bunch of honey in there.

Salt, pepper?

I like to salt and pepper almost everything that I cook unless there's dietary restrictions that prevent me from doing so.

Okay. And then just mix it all up. Do we let it sit?

Great question. Yeah, slaw that sits for an hour, 2 hours is gonna be more flavorful. It's gonna absorb those flavors better, You know, at the end of the day, you're looking for those nutrients. And as long as you're eating that, eating your veggies, then, then I'm happy.

Yeah, you did a good job. Yeah. Any restrictions on how quickly we should eat it? Will it just get softer over time? Will it get more flavorful? Should we eat it within a couple of days? Obviously, this isn't something that we can freeze, but any, any thoughts on that?

Right. Yeah. You know, I think that is something that you, in order to get the best flavor and texture out of it, you're going to want to eat within 12 to 24 hours, but it's definitely not going to hurt you if you save it for 5 days and you eat it then, it'll just be a little bit softer. Probably some of the water will have come out, so it'll be a little bit wetter, a little bit more liquidy than creamy.

All right, so we knocked out broccoli. What about broccolini? It's like broccoli's fancier cousin.

Absolutely. You know, my broccolini, I like to just, Roast it. Before I roast it, I'll toss it with a little bit of olive oil and garlic, salt and pepper. And I'll mince up some fresh garlic or use some of the jarred fresh garlic, minced garlic from the grocery store, toss it in that, roast it at 350 for 6, 7 minutes so it's kind of al dente. And then once it comes out, I like to squeeze a little lemon on it to get a nice citrus bright flavor into it.

That sounds awesome. Okay, so we knocked out broccoli. Let's talk about cauliflower. What should we do with that?

Again, raw is always going to be best. So I like serving cauliflower on the side of dips. My kids love cauliflower dipped in ranch. You know, again, back to the ranch.

One of these days you're going to have to tell people what you really feel about ranch.

Always. Well, I don't know if I can say that in a podcast. I guess we're not regulated by the FCC. Yes, I can tell you what I think about.

Everybody has their preferences. I am not a blue cheese fan. Jay loves blue cheese dressing, and I do like ranch, but you are—

I don't personally like ranch.

But your kids like it. My kids like it.

And so it's a way to eat up, get their veggies in, right? Exactly. If I can get them to eat their veggies, they can have their ranch.

Cool. All right, so we got it eating, eating it raw. What about riced, mashed? Should we? I've done it before from the whole head, ricing it. That is a— fat pain in the rear end.

Yes, absolutely. Shortcuts, you know, I, I think honestly buying the, um, there's a couple of vegetables that I really advocate buying frozen because they retain their nutritional value. They're always picked at the peak of freshness, and they, um, and they, and they just work. They're not— the quality of them is not compromised. Cauliflower is one of those, especially the riced cauliflower, because you're saving a ton of time.

And a lot of stink in your kitchen.

And a lot of stink in your kitchen. But, uh, you know, just to kind of go on a little bit of a tangent, frozen peas, frozen corn, frozen spinach— things that I'll always use. Even if, you know, peas are in season, I'd rather buy those peak freshness peas from the freezer section and not have to peel them all myself.

So is this like a picture into your freezer? You're always going to have peas, always going to have corn, always going to have frozen spinach and frozen cauliflower, riced cauliflower, or riced cauliflower.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so yeah, so back to the cauliflower, I think, you know, using the riced cauliflower, you can just take that and either sauté it with a little bit of oil and whatever seasonings you like. If you want to go kind of Mediterranean, maybe use some, some turmeric and cumin in there. If you want to go more Latin American, you know, you could even Toss it with some canned diced tomatoes and green chilies.

Oh, that sounds good.

Make almost like a Spanish rice, air quotes rice, cauliflower rice.

What was that, green chilies and?

The cans of green chilies and diced tomatoes. One brand of those is the Rotel, but there's always the grocery store brand, which are just as good.

And do we take it straight outta the freezer and put it right into the pan?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, just get your pan nice and hot, throw some oil in there, and then throw it right in there. Let it sit for a minute or two before you start agitating it. That'll start to crisp it up, start to get a little browner and break through some of that freeze on there. Then you can add your tomatoes and chilies and just toss it up, stir it up. Should be good at the end.

Like what about a more sort of gingery flavor? I'm thinking of, you know, like a rice with like pineapple and ginger and something like that. Could you do the same thing with cauliflower rice?

Absolutely. You know, I actually keep ginger juice at home, so you could throw some ginger juice in there. I know they have that at a lot of the local grocery stores. You could also use fresh ginger, you know, mince it up and throw that in there in the oil, then throw the cauliflower rice in, kind of like you're sweating garlic or onion beforehand.

Okay, anything else you would put in that other than ginger and ginger, pineapple.

I might use a little bit of the tamari gluten-free soy, you know, give it a little bit of an Asian flair. I think that would be really good. You know, there's a lot of ways you can go with cauliflower. A lot of times when I'm cooking dinners and I want to use cauliflower as a side vegetable, I'll take it and I'll break it into the florets the same way I did the broccoli by cutting the bottom, scoring the bottom, and pulling them apart. And then I, I'll top it with, um, olive oil, black pepper, and Parmesan cheese. Roast that in the oven for a little bit, and that's your Parmesan cauliflower. You could absolutely roast it and toss it in some buffalo sauce and add your buffalo cauliflower bites. Um, another great way to do it is you take your head, your whole head, and you cut it into thirds, so 3 equal sections that are— that go long ways. And then, uh, season that with oil, salt, and pepper, and then you can just throw them on the grill. Grill those, and it's like cauliflower steaks, if you will. Those are always delicious as well.

Purple versus white cauliflower, that is— doesn't matter.

Both have great nutrition. The nutritional value is a little bit different. You know, different colored vegetables are that way because of their minerals and nutrients that are in them. You know, again, I think this kind of goes to As long as you're eating your vegetables, I'm happy with you and you're doing a good job. But if you want to go white sometimes, purple sometimes, yellow, green, you know, so many different colors. Yeah, they're all good for you. So just keep eating them.

All right. So we got our broccoli, we got our cauliflower rice, we got our cauliflower steaks. Let's go to one of your least favorites, kale. Oh, kale. She's still hanging on. She's still pretty hot these days. But I know it's not your favorite. But any suggestions on how we should eat that?

Well, Chris, you know, even though kale is vile weed, I do like baby kale.

Okay, all right.

So in baby form, I think it's delicious. I'm not personally a big fan of either curly kale or the dino kale, the big leafy kales. But that doesn't mean that I don't love cooking them for people and making people happy cooking them. So kale is one that I really like to, sauté and then steam a little bit. One thing that I do make at home is just a very simple garlic kale. So I'll take some minced garlic, throw it in some oil, sauté that until it's fragrant, and then put chopped up kale with the stems removed into the pot, stir it around for a little bit, and then I'll add about a half a cup, maybe a quarter cup to half a cup of water, and then throw the COVID on. And that'll That steam will cook the kale through. You've got the garlic that's been sweated and is kind of nice and roasted golden brown. And when you're done, since you haven't used so much water and the kale hasn't been submerged, you're really keeping a lot of those nutrients inside the leaves. Whereas if you blanch it by submerging it completely in the water, a lot of that water is leaching those nutrients out.

And that sounds like it's pretty quick.

Very quick. From the time you throw the garlic in till the time it's done, maybe 4 minutes total. It just depends on how cooked you like your kale. Within 2 to 3 minutes of that kale being in there, if you stir it once or twice, it should all be soft and wilted down. And you do lose about, I don't know, maybe 60% of the volume when you do it like that.

Yeah.

But that's always a big hit.

Yeah. Okay. So similarly, what about bok choy?

Ah, bok choy. Very underutilized, but I think— I know.

It's like, it needs its moment in the sun. It does. Yeah.

It's very tasty. And I think bok choy is one of those ones that I like to slice up and, you know, about— I'm just thinking—

And are we talking the big heads of bok choy or the baby bok choy or both?

Both. You know, if I'm slicing up the, for lack of a better term, adult bok choy, I will take the big leaves with the stem and I'll cut it in half so that they're not quite so long horizontally.

So half, okay, gotcha.

So I'll slice it vertically from top to bottom and then I'll put 'em together. So the horizontal length is, is much less. If I'm doing the baby ones, I'll just slice them as they are, and I slice them about a quarter inch thick. And those I like to either sauté or, you know, throw in with a bunch of other vegetables like carrots and onion and bell pepper and sauté those, make a nice— almost like a stir fry.

Oh, yum! And that's an easy one to do raw too.

Absolutely. Yeah, raw bok choy is great, goes great with dips, and, you know, you can make salads out of it if you chop it up. And then just steaming it, you know, get a pan with a quarter inch of water, throw the bok choy in there, throw the COVID on, 4 minutes later, you got nice steamed bok choy that's kept a lot of its nutrients.

Should we separate leaves from like the harder stems? And can we use those for different applications? Or should we just for ease of getting them in us, just cook them all?

So what I like to do when I'm cooking them, especially if I'm steaming them, is I'll take the bok choy, especially the baby one, and I'll slice it top to bottom and I'll use each half and steam each half. I think that that makes a much better visual product at the end rather than having a bunch of separate leaves that I'm kind of piling on a plate. When you've got that nice, almost like heart of bok choy there, I think that looks really nice and it also tastes good.

Yeah, good texture too. All right, so we got bok choy. How about Brussels sprouts?

Brussels sprouts. I personally love them.

I'm totally gonna throw my mother under the bus. She used to like buy the frozen ones and like either microwave them or I think she would boil them and oh, no bueno. Sorry, Mom, love you. But now I like them. But I think somebody roasted them for me and that's when I was like, This is a Brussels sprout?

Yeah.

So what else can we do with them?

So Brussels sprouts, first and foremost, you wanna make sure you clean them. I like to chop the little bottom part off, the little stem, just as minimally as I can. And then I like to cut them in half. So with my Brussels sprouts, if I'm serving them for a dinner party or something like that, I like to get some really heavily salted water and blanch them, throw them in there, boil them for 30 seconds. So they turn nice bright green and then I'll take them out and cool them off. And then I roast them. And when I roast my Brussels sprouts, I'll chop up some red onion, toss it with the Brussels sprouts, a little bit of either olive or avocado oil, salt and pepper, and minced garlic. And then I just throw them in at like 400 degrees in a single layer on a sheet pan. And I'll cook them until I see those leaves start to turn brown and curl up and crisp up. And then I take them out and I'll, I really like topping mine again with like a reduced balsamic or even just regular balsamic. I think that that's a great flavor that goes with the Brussels sprouts really well.

What about raw?

Raw Brussels sprouts, I love shaving them and adding them to, believe it or not, baby kale and making a salad out of that that I, lots of times I'll throw in some goat cheese, roasted grapes, and—

Oh, this is like your famous salad.

Well, my famous salad has the, grilled peaches. Oh, but hello.

Can't wait for summer.

Since grilled peaches aren't available all that often, I like roasting grapes. I'll throw some candied nuts in there, whether it's pecans or cashews or almonds. And then I'll make a vinaigrette. Very simple vinaigrette. It's all it is, is one part of champagne vinegar, two parts of a neutral oil like an avocado or a grapeseed. A little bit of shallot, a little bit of sugar, and—

Just white sugar?

Just white sugar.

Okay.

And then like a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. And that makes a really nice champagne vinaigrette that's a little bit sweet but nice and tangy. And it goes really great with that salad. Plus that vinaigrette you can flavor with almost anything. If you like oranges, add some orange juice. If you want it lemony, citrusy, add some lemon or lime. I've made it with blood orange. I've made it with lychee. It can really go a lot of ways. Strawberry, raspberry.

Yum. I'm officially hungry. Okay, so we knocked out Brussels sprouts raw and cooked. We got 2 more.

Okay.

Cabbage. I mean, it's kind of like the poor man's crucifer, right? But man, you can do so many awesome things with it.

You know, you really can. I mean, Number one, slaw is amazing. You can never go wrong with slaw. But I mean, I like when I make tacos at home, I like using cabbage for the base rather than lettuce. I think it adds a nice crunch and I believe it also looks a little bit prettier. But I mean, cabbage is so versatile. You can, depending on the type of cabbage, you know, you can take it and wrap things in it, you know, make kind of like a Greek-style cabbage-wrapped meatballs.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can boil it with your corned beef and go Irish style. What I'll do is I'll simply take some mayonnaise, some lemon juice, and a whole grain mustard, mix those up with a little bit of apple cider vinegar, and then I'll drizzle that on top of the braised cabbage, the cabbage that's been boiled with the corned beef. You know, there's really just a lot of ways you could go with cabbage. It could be roasted, cut it into wedges and grill it. And then again, just top it with whatever flavor you like.

So you mentioned wrapping cabbage. So that leads us to our next one because we are in the South. Collards, the unsung true hero of the South. But I'm sorry, guys, a lot of people are cooking them to the death. So I've seen cabbage being like acting as more of a wrap. But what other suggestions? Well, first of all, how do we do that? Because I've never done it. I've seen it on Pinterest. Shocker. But do we lightly blanch it and then make a wrap out of that? And then what else can we do with collards?

Collards are cabbage.

There you go. All right. So we'll keep it simple. Same thing we can do with all of our cabbage stuff.

So yeah, basically when you are stuffing them, what you want to do is you want to almost just dip it into a hot boiling salted water and that'll just make it so it's more malleable, more pliable. You can roll it a little bit better. But then you can take something such as ground beef or ground pork, mix in a little bit of cooked rice or bell pepper or something like that. Basically anything you can make a meatball or a meatloaf out of. And then you put it, a small spoonful of it inside of the cabbage or the collard. And just roll it up. And then you can stack those all in a big pot, add some water, and just let it go for a little while. You could also put them all out on a sheet pan, pop it in the oven for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, until you can cook it to an internal temperature of 165 degrees to make sure it's safe. And then pull it out and throw some marinara sauce on there, Oh yeah. You know, do really whatever you like, whatever tastes good to you.

What about the traditional Southern way of cooking collards? Do you have any, which is usually in like bacon fat, it's cooked all day, and I'm not trying to pick on Southerners. Like, I'm glad they're eating them than not, but how, what's kind of like a little bit of a recipe remix suggestion that you have to make collards a little bit healthier and for us to be able to get more nutrition out of that?

Well, again, it's really going to depend on cooking time and how long you cook them for. So what I would recommend is trying to shift your palate a little bit to having them more al dente than back to the mushy. So if you want to take your collards and you want the traditional, instead of throwing them in boiling water with a ham hock and leaving them in there all day, throw them in the boiling water, put in your pork products so you get that flavor. If you dice up the pork product and you give it more surface area, that's going to flavor it better. So that's a way you can get that flavor to penetrate the collards quicker and you'll be able to taste it with less time. Add a little bit of a red wine vinegar and then just maybe take it off try taking it off and testing some of it a little bit earlier than you usually do. The longer you cook it, the more nutrients it's going to leach. So if you can, you know, save any time in that water, then, then you're, you're doing yourself a favor in terms of your nutrient intake.

Okay, cool. So we got some new tricks for collards and we got a bunch of new tricks for cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale. So if you're going to leave us with a couple of tips to walk away with for cooking our crucifers, or not cooking them. How about just eating them? What are kind of like the main takeaways you want us to come away with?

I think the main takeaway is the less time you cook it for, the more nutrients it's going to retain. However, if overcooking it is the only way that you'll eat it, please continue to do that because they're all very important and all very healthy for you regardless.

All right, awesome. So now we know what crucifers are and we're going to eat them and we're going to be so amazingly healthy. How about that? All right, Chef John from the Fueling Edge, thank you so much. And looking forward to the next episode.

We'll see you next time, Chris.