The Best Way to Boil Green Beans

I love the gorgeous bright color of briefly blanched green beans in salad, but I’ve never loved their starchy, still-raw taste or their so-called crisp-tender texture, which is usually not tender at all. But cooking vegetables until they’re soft enough to be speared with a fork generally means you’ve got to boil the living color out of them—not to mention all their fresh, grassy flavor.

Years ago, I stumbled across a tip in Harold McGee’s indispensable tome (1984) that described how heavily