Broccoli crunch (broccoli and bacon salad)
Broccoli is tough and hard to chew. But soften it up a little bit by cooking and it's a delicious and a very healthy salad vegetable.
Start a few hours before you want to eat. Cooked broccoli does not last in the fridge, so you really want to eat this salad the same day as you make it. Chop broccoli in bite sized pieces. Add some chopped onion. Saute in a large pan on medium-low heat for 10 min. The goal is not to cook the broccoli, but soften it. Keep stirring the broccoli to make sure the bottom pieces do not get fried. Make sure that you stop cooking before the broccoli loses its brilliant green color. If it turns swampy brownish green color - you cooked it too long. Taste the broccoli as it cooks and stop as soon as it is soft enough to chew without effort.
Chill the broccoli. The reason it needs to be cold is that in the next step we will add mayo to it, and if it's too warm, the mayo will separate, and it'll taste like crap. You can put it in the fridge for 2-3 hours, but cooked broccoli has this funky smell that some people just cannot stand. I have these stainless steel bowls from IKEA, so I use them to chill the broccoli in the garage (in winter). I put the broccoli in the large bowl. I put the ice in the extra large bowl and stick the large bowl into the extra large one.
