Whether you sugarcoat it and call it a labor of love or bluntly describe it as a chore, there's one thing pretty much all cooks can agree on: peeling fava beans is a time-consuming process. At least it was . . .

Enter Harold McGee, noted food science wizard and author of On Food and Cooking [1], with a nifty trick [2] that makes prepping this Spring vegetable so much easier:

• Remove the fava beans from their pods, bring a pot of water to a boil, and set up an ice bath for blanching, per usual.
• The hack: add about one tablespoon baking soda to the boiling water per quart of water before blanching the fava beans. (Alkaline baking soda loosens the bean's skins — about half of the beans will essentially peel themselves while cooking, while the remainder will be much easier to peel.) Remove the fava beans from the boiling water and transfer to the ice bath as they pop out of their skins, removing all remaining fava beans after two to three minutes.
• Peel any fava beans that haven't already shed their skins and use in your favorite fava recipe [3].