I grew up eating Puerto Rican so I know root vegetables, but not the ones everyone else eats. Batata, yuca, malanga, name (pronounced ya-meh and I always thought it was a weird tasting yam) and yautia. Mi abuela put them in everything. Them and potatoes.
But American cuisine is not so up on their root veggies. Besides potatoes and carrots there doesn’t seem to be much call for them. I didn’t knowingly eat a parsnip or a turnip until this year. I have eaten turnip greens but that doesn’t count. I’ve never eaten a rutabaga and have only seen thin slivers of radishes in tossed salads.
This year I grew radishes in my back yard and boy were they delicious. Not hard and bitter but tender and peppery yet also sweet. I would have never known that radishes were good if I hadn’t grown them myself.
So, I’m asking for recipes that highlight American (or maybe they’re called winter) root vegetables-- and maybe a reason why they aren’t more popular.
I do this during the winter, and I don’t know if you have your oven fixed or not…
Peel and cut up potatoes, onions, carrots, turnips, and celery (yea, I know celery isn’t a root vegetable). Toss with chicken broth. Put into oven, roast until done (time will depend on temperature). I think I usually do this at 350 for an hour or so. Stir, if you happen to think about it, once or twice, so that the broth gets all over the veggies. The veggies caramelize beautifully. This is one of my daughter’s favorite dishes.
I usually use 1/2 to 1 potato, 1 carrot, one stalk of celery, 1/2 medium onion, and about 1/2 turnip per person, and just enough broth to coat all the vegetables. You can also use beef broth. If you want to add a bell pepper, or some sweet potato, or peas, I certainly won’t try to stop you.
Notice that this has almost NO fat in it, and if you use the lower sodium broth, or home made broth, it isn’t too bad on the sodium front, either. You get some carbs, but they’re complex carbs.
That sounds fabulous and something like a dish my husband makes with fresh beets (yeah, I forgot about them) and potatoes. Speaking of beets-- I thought I hated them but then I ate fresh beets and found out I only hated canned ones.
P.S. My oven is still broken but, in very good news, I found a job that I will begin in two weeks. That should give us the extra cash to have someone come see it. Or, if we wait a few months, buy a brand new one. That would be all kinds of cool.
What Lynn said. We do roasted roots all the time in winter. I generally go light on the beets, but there are potatoes, carrots, turnips, rutabaga and onions galore. Sprinkle with vegetable rub (Harry & David make a killer version), salt and pepper and roast until the smell drives you wild.
I’ve had good luck (particularly after Thanksgiving and Christmas, when turkey thighs are on sale) making slow-cooked stews with all the vegetables you’d see at that time of year–pumpkin, squash, yams, using all the spices you’d use in turkey stuffing–sage, rosemary, thyme… wait, that’s a song. Anyway.
Substitute pretty much any food item for “beets” in the above sentence and the sentence still makes sense: stock, peas, potato chips, beer.
I use parsnips and turnips as filler ingredients in Shepherd’s pie, and my wife uses them along with other vegetables in making soup. I haven’t seem many recipes that call for them as primary ingredients, they seem to get lumped together along with celery and such as generic filler vegetables.
A lot of people shy away from turnips and especially rutabaga because Mom or Grandma included it in stew.
And to stretch the food dollar, like at the end of winter when there was little-to-no fresh stuff available, there was more rutabaga than stew.
One way to eat root veggies is RAW. Radishes, of course, and carrots. Some people like raw sweet potatoes. Raw turnips are wonderful. I don’t know about rutabaga. Parsnips are rather woody, and might be too chewy in their raw state.
Most little kids love raw white potatoes–I still do! But only have a bite or two, because too much raw potato can give you a belly ache. It has an enzyme which must be deactivated by cooking to be digestible.
~VOW
I’m making this salad tonight. I’m not a big recipe follower, but this one sounded nice, and I happened to have all the ingredients on hand (seriously, who doesn’t always have carrots, avocados, lemons, and cumin on hand?). Will report back later.
Anything potato-y can be turned into really nifty homemade fries/chips. (My husband bakes ours instead of frying them, but I s’pose you could fry them.)
Sweet potatoes are the best (put a pinch of cinnamon sugar for dessert chips), turnips do pretty well (he puts some sort of spice on them), carrots turn out a bit like sweet banana chips.
Carrot and sweet-potato soup is delightful (it’s pureed and so smooth and hearty and tasty).
Mashed just about anything that will mash is good also - mashed half-plain-potatoes and half-something else mashable is often a really nice change of pace from regular mashed potatoes. I think turnips are the most like regular potatoes, daikon is splendid, and mashed sweet potatoes are almost better as a dessert (although they aren’t quite as overwhelmingly sweet when half-and-half).
What else… hot borscht (Ukrainian beet soup) is flipping amazing. I currently know no one who can make it, but husband is working on it. I had it first when I was very young, and convinced that I hated beets (which I still mostly do) but I made a very quick exception for that.
What else do we make… Underground Stir Fry - take a buttload of rooty things and slice them all into long thin slices and make a nifty heavy stir-fry out of them with udon noodles. It’s really really good - we usually use a bit of turkey or ham for little tiny meat bits, but the different root bits: usually carrots, potatoes/turnips, sweet potatoes/yams, carrots, daikon really have the spotlight. Super yummy.
I don’t really like most aboveground veggies, but I really love root vegetables.
Well, some of us have serious trouble digesting root veggies in the rutabaga/turnip/parsnip family. Serious trouble.
When I roast veggies, root or otherwise, I toss them with garlic oil first, and sprinkle on spices to taste. Currently, I’m most fond of Moroccan style blends, which include paprika, turmeric, black pepper at a mimimum, and cumin.
Another recipe:
Potato and beet salad. Cube boiled and cooled potatoes, beets, carrots, and hard-boiled eggs and put in bowl. Add chopped raw onion, parsley, green peas. Dress with either a mayo or sour cream dressing. If you like, add herring. Use salt and pepper, mild vinegar, Tabasco sauce, other flavors you like to taste. Serve cold. Though I love spicey foods, this is one salad that tastes best minimally spiced, so the flavor of the veggies comes through.
This isn’t a root veggie recipe, but…it’s a winter veggie recipe, and it tastes like a root veggie, so…close enough.
Take one butternut squash, peel (try not to cut your thumbs off–I freakin’ hate peeling butternut squashes) and cut into about 1.5" cubes.
Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Roast at about 400[sup]o[/sup] for about 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally until they’re golden brown and soft. About 5 minutes before they’re done, take a lot of fresh thyme* (a few large tablespoons of the leaves) and sprinkle over the squash. Let it cook for maybe 5 more minutes. Serve.
MM-mm–good.
*I’m normally fine with dried thyme, but in this case, it doesn’t work at all
