Published May 1, 1997.
While casting around for the best sugar snap peas recipe, we found that sugar snaps benefit greatly from the addition of some salt as they cook and that the best way to add salt was to blanch them. Blanching produced peas with excellent flavor and texture. The only problem with our sugar snap pea recipe was that blanched peas tend to shrivel or pucker a bit as they cool. We solved this problem by plunging the cooked peas in ice water as soon as they were drained. This also helped to set their bright color and prevent further softening from residual heat.
Have a bowl of ice water ready to "shock" the drained peas and prevent further softening and shriveling.
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