Vegetable cooking times

Split by method rather than by vegetable, because that is how people search. Steaming runs a minute or two longer than boiling, since steam gives up its heat more gently than water does.

Vegetables do not work like meat. There is no safe internal temperature to reach and no doneness scale to hit, because you are not making anything safe. You are breaking down cell walls, and that happens through heat and time rather than at a particular number.

So the times below are about texture alone, and texture is a preference. Someone who wants broccoli with bite and someone who wants it soft are both right, and they are about two minutes apart.

What actually decides the time

How you cut it matters more than the clock

Vegetables cook from the outside in, so surface area and thickness set the time far more than weight does. A carrot in coins and the same carrot in batons are minutes apart. Cut everything to roughly one size and everything finishes together, which is most of what separates a good cook from a frustrated one.

Salt the water properly

About 10 g per litre. Salted water seasons the vegetable as it cooks, from the inside, which salt added at the table cannot replicate. Unlike with pasta there is no starch to worry about, so the water can be reused for the next batch.

Cold water stops the cooking

Green vegetables keep cooking on their own held heat after draining, and that is where the drab grey green colour comes from. Thirty seconds in cold water sets the colour bright. This matters most for broccoli, beans and peas, and barely at all for root vegetables.