The bend-and-snap isn't always the best method.
will tell you that asparagus has a built-in natural breaking point: Hold a spear up horizontally, and break off the end where you see it start to droop—or, even simpler, bend it yourself in your hands, and it'll break precisely where you need it to.The problem is, this approach doesn't really work better, or faster, than the more obvious method: slicing off the ends of a bunch of spears all at once.
As the photo makes clear, you can waste a lot of perfectly edible asparagus this way. That asparagus wants to be trimmed, all right—it just wants it a little too much. Though it doesn't make that same satisfying snapping sound, it's far easier to simply line up the asparagus stalks and look at where they appear to start toughening up toward the ends. That generally corresponds with where most stalks' green color starts to fade to white. Then cut off those hard ends with a chef's knife—you know, just as you would when trimming other vegetables.
If bend-and-snap is what works best for you, more power to you! But if, like us, you've found that the snapping trick doesn't quitethe trick, a good old-fashioned knife-and-cutting-board combo may help get these spring beauties into the pan, and into your mouth, a bit faster.