When you join a food coop you open yourself up to the possibility that you may have to learn to cook things you’ve never tried before. Sometimes, you open yourself up to cooking things you can’t even identify. That happened this week. I got turnips in my box o’ food and while I’ve heard of turnips, I definitely couldn’t identify them at first glance.
Thank goodness for google because that taught me they looked like this
It's not pretty but it's delicious
and are a root vegetable. Once that mystery was solved, I also realized I had some red potatoes so thought I could cook them too and maybe trick my kids (and self quite frankly) into eating turnips. I also had carrots and since they too are a root vegetable (I sure know my root vegetables, don’t I?!?) I threw some of them on the pile. There really isn’t much of a recipe, but for those of you who like clarity in the kitchen, I’ll put down at the bottom what I did.
Mostly though, I chopped, shook and baked on high heat and wouldn’t you know everyone liked it, (except The Baby who hates everything.) even after I told them they were eating turnips!
Gather Your Veggies, root that is.
You peel a turnip just like an apple. Goodbye ugly purple skin.
Then start chopping.
Leave the skins on the potato. Just wash 'em well.
Peel and chop the carrots into thick pieces.
Then mix up the olive oil, salt and garlic to use next.
Throw the chopped veggies in a bowl (or if you’re lazy like me the roasting pan) and toss with the olive oil mix.
Spread your greased up veggies (What? Not appetizing?) in the pan and sprinkle with rosemary.
Yummer! The finished product. I swear turnips don’t suck. I will say that I found that the more they’re cooked (think browner and crispier) they less bitter and more tasty they become. Oh, and contrary to The Husband’s belief, they do not come with ketchup. Jerk.
Recipe for Roasted Root Vegetables
Ingredients:
- 1 large or three small red potatoes or baking potatoes
- 1 medium turnip
- 3-4 large carrots
- Olive Oil
- 1/4 t salt (kosher if you have it or sea salt. The coarser the better.)
- 1/4 t minced garlic (1/8 t powder if that’s what you have)
- 1/2 t Rosemary
Procedure
- Preheat Oven (I used 400 because my oven is like Steven King’s Carrie and has a mind of it’s own. Normal people can do 450)
- Spray roasting pan with olive oil (or cooking spray if that’s your thing)
- Chop veggies into bite size chunks (Carrots, turnips, potatoes etc)
- In small bowl mix olive oil, salt and garlic together
- Put chopped veggies in large bowl and toss with oil mixture
- Spread vegetables in one layer in pan
- Sprinkle Rosemary on top
- Cook for 20-30 minutes (again, my Carrie oven is hard to judge by) until potatoes and turnips brown.
- DO NOT (like my husband did) cover in ketchup. (Ugh)
Looks good and I actually knew what root vegtables were – thank you Rachel Ray:) Although, I’ve only used potatoes and onions, I do in fact have a recipe similar to this. Again thank you Rachel Ray.