@cooksillustrated · Cook's Illustrated
Saved 2026-05-15 · Posted 2025-03-13 · Status: New
Unless you grow your own asparagus, you’re probably underestimating how naturally sweet it can be. When harvested early in the growing season, asparagus packs an impressive 4% sugar. However, thanks to an unusually rapid metabolism that continues after harvesting, the spears soon consume those sugars. (According to Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking [2004], asparagus consumes its sugars more quickly than any other common vegetable.) This process causes asparagus to taste flatter and less interesting within 24 hours after harvest. We’ve long recommended trimming the dried and sealed bottoms of asparagus spears before standing them in a glass of water and refrigerating them until cooking to make them juicier. But going forward, we’ll follow McGee’s advice and store the spears in a weak sugar solution (about 7% sugar, or 4 teaspoons sugar to 1 cup water) to both plump them up and sweeten them.
Use this tip in @algcooks’s Asparagus Mimosa recipe.
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Comments (14)
i can’t get past the cutting of a perfectly good and reusable rubber band
@tommy_schanke saw you liked this video. Have you tried this ?
Thank you for the..Asparagussy tip.😮 ❤️👏🙌
I’ve been keeping my asparagus like this in the fridge, it lasts soooo long
😮
Nice tip I will try
Wow. Good to know. I will definitely try this. 🙌🙌🙌
This works great 👏👏👏
So interesting! I did not know this
❤️❤️👏👏
@_angelica_maddox_
Tired this and loved it. Flavor is definitely enhanced . We ate it right out the pan😂
Good to know
American asparagus