Why you are cooking this tonight
Broccolini is the vegetable that gets hotter and tastier the more you punish it in a hot pan. Ten minutes in a cast iron with smoking olive oil and it comes out with the stems sweet and tender and the florets black-tipped and crisp. A crush of garlic, a spoon of chilli oil, a squeeze of lemon. Done.
This is the side that makes a steak look serious, turns a pasta into a dinner, sits beside a roast chicken on a Sunday, and is honestly good enough to eat straight from the pan while you finish cooking everything else. A bunch of broccolini is six dollars at any greengrocer and feeds four people.
Notes on method
Get the pan ripping hot before anything goes in. Don’t move the broccolini around – let the florets char. Finishing salt goes on after, not before.
What to pour with it
With a steak or lamb, a glass of McLaren Vale shiraz. Alongside pasta, Yarra pinot or a fiano. For cocktails, a Negroni – the bitter herbaceous lift matches the char.
The recipe
Ingredients
Method
- Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Blanch broccolini for 60 seconds. Drain and pat dry with a tea towel.
- Heat a heavy frypan or cast iron over high heat until smoking. Add 2 tbsp olive oil.
- Lay broccolini in a single layer. Don't move for 2 minutes - let it char. Flip, char the other side for 2 minutes.
- Push broccolini to one side, lower heat to medium. Add remaining olive oil and garlic. Cook 30 seconds until fragrant.
- Toss everything together with lemon zest, juice and a pinch of salt.
- Tip onto a serving plate. Spoon chilli oil across. Scatter parmesan, almonds and cracked pepper. Serve immediately.
Nutrition
Two things that go wrong
You didn’t blanch first.
Raw broccolini in a hot pan goes black on the outside and stays raw in the stem. A 60-second blanch in salted boiling water sets the green colour and partly cooks the stems, so the char-and-finish in the pan only takes a few minutes.
Your pan wasn’t smoking hot.
Char needs serious heat. The pan should ripple and barely-smoke before the broccolini goes in. Don’t move the florets for the first two minutes — leave them in contact with the metal so they pick up colour.
Variations worth knowing
- With anchovy and garlicMash 4 anchovy fillets into the olive oil before tossing the broccolini. Adds savoury umami that takes it past side dish into main territory.
- Lemon and tahiniDrizzle with tahini thinned with lemon juice and water in place of chilli oil. Salty-creamy-bright.
- Sesame and gingerAdd a tablespoon of grated ginger to the pan with the garlic, finish with toasted sesame seeds and a splash of soy.
Leftovers and make ahead
Cold charred broccolini is one of the best things to throw on a sandwich the next day, or chop and add to a pasta with anchovy and garlic. Refrigerate in a sealed container for up to two days. The chilli oil will deepen overnight and make the leftovers even better.