Roy Finamore's Broccoli Cooked Forever

Every week, Food52's Senior Editor Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that are nothing short of genius.

Today: How to save overcooked broccoli? Keep cooking it.

- Kristen

Broccoli, cooked forever -- it sounds pretty terrible, doesn't it? You're having a bad cafeteria flashback right now, aren't you? Stay with me.

We've all been groomed to expect not a shade past crisp-tender. Steam it to the point that even one tendril turns yellow, or it starts to emit that creeping sulfurous-funk smell -- and we think we've ruined the whole pot.

And to a degree, we're right. Broccoli overcooked carelessly tastes stale and murky. It brings us back to what now seems a less enlightened time, when people were afraid of their vegetables acting like themselves.

But when you push beyond that disappointing just-too-done state (and throw in a whole lot of olive oil bubbling lazily with garlic, anchovy, and hot peppers) you find yourself with a miraculous substance.

For sharing this rather heretical technique, we can all thank FOOD52er cookbookchick, who discovered it in Tasty, the 2007 James Beard Award-winning cookbook by Roy Finamore.

Finamore is an accomplished cookbook editor who in recent years began writing (very good, very funny) cookbooks himself. This recipe is a spinoff of one he learned from Nancy Silverton -- you remember Nancy.

Here's what "forever" really means: You boil your trimmed stems and florets for five minutes, then drain and slip them into their olive oil bath, covered, for two whole hours. Surely some of the vitamins are cooked right out of it, but if you're worried about that, go eat a kale salad instead.

"The blanching is to send the broccoli on its way to foreverland, softening it just a bit so it starts absorbing the flavors in the oil," Finamore explained in an email. "It also ensures that the broccoli doesn’t fry and get crisp at the beginning, when the oil is at its hottest."

I want to call the result broccoli butter, but it's more appropriately broccoli confit. The florets trap all the oil's richness, and the stems melt away without provocation.

It would be fitting spooned up onto some sturdy bread, blanketing a good ridged pasta, layered onto a pizza, or anointing a sandwich (you better believe it made its way into #amandaskidslunch).

Best of all: No sulfur smell, just the scent of lovely confiting garlic and friends. Broccoli cooked forever is starting to sound downright romantic, isn't it?

Roy Finamore's Broccoli Cooked Forever

From Tasty: Get Great Food on the Table Every Day (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006)

Serves 4 to 6

2 bunches (2 to 2 1/4 pounds) broccoli
1 cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves, sliced thin
2 small hot peppers, halved lengthwise
4 anchovy fillets, chopped
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

See a slideshow and the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Want more genius? TryNorthern Spy's Kale Salad(the opposite of Broccoli Cooked Forever).

Got a genius recipe to share -- from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Please send it my way (and tell me what's so smart about it) at [email protected].

Photos by James Ransom