I’m sorry to report that dinner tonight has been pre-empted by a new MacBook Pro, the fiddling with which is consuming all my free time.
In lieu of food, I have a question and an important public service message, both from people named Jodi-with-an-“i.” And I’m not kidding about the public service part; you should all read it and then hie to engage in some altruistic behvaior. Unless you don’t want to help cure cancer.
(1) The question. Turnips: What the fuck? Sister-in-law Jodi is getting some in her CSA and wants to know what to do with them. So she asked me, because I write a food blog and I seem like the person to ask. Which I would be, if I knew more about cooking and liked turnips. But I know very little and loathe turnips, so I have to punt. Please tell Jodi what to do with turnips.
(2) The altruism. Cancer: It sucks. I had it, I lived. My parents had it, they didn’t.
Pistols and Popcorn‘s Jodi, my new best internet-turned-real-life-friend, is helping her brother Fat Cyclist raise money through the Livestrong Challenge on behalf of his wife Susan, who has stage 4 breast cancer. (For those unlucky enough never to have made good friends with cancer, there isn’t anything past stage 4.)
Jodi is raising money a with a raffle and some sweet swag, and I’m not overstating the case to say that you might find yourself on the red carpet with Michelle Williams and Leonardo DiCaprio at the premiere of a Martin Scorsese film. FOR SERIOUS.
Plus, I will be at the party where they announce the winners, and I’m pretty awesome. (But more awesome: cures for cancer.)
Visit her Livestrong donation page to join in.
Thursday Night Smackdown 
I’m going to tryyyyy to help with the turnips. I also get them from my CSA and have tried a few things to get through it. Here’s what has worked best. I use panko for the bread crumbs, but do whatcha like
Turnip Casserole With Sweet Onions
Ingredients:
3/4 cup grated turnip
3/4 cup grated potato
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup low fat yogurt
1/4 cup whole grain bread crumbs
1/8 cup sunflower, olive or safflower oil
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1/2 tablespoon dried parsley
Sea Salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Thoroughly mix all the ingredients, except the bread crumbs, in a large bowl.
Pour the mixture into a lightly greased shallow casserole.
Scatter the bread crumbs over the top. Bake for 40 minutes.
Serve immediately.
Have never eaten a turnip in my life. Wouldn’t be too miserable if it stayed that way. It’s not the most appealing of veges, even brussels sprouts are sexier than turnips.
Had a look at the pistols and popcorn site, sounds like a really great cause – I wish them all the best.
Pickle them
Turnip gratin, I reckon:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/turnipgratin_4504.shtml
or just throw them in a stew or curry like you would any other root veg
Chop ’em up, with parsnips and potatoes and carrots, and boil the crap out of them. Dump in bowl, add cream, butter and thyme, and get a good upper body workout by smooshing them, more or less, with a potato masher. I call it ‘Root Vegetable Smash’ and it’s acually pretty good.
I’m sure there are many wonderful things that can be done with turnips, but I’ve always thought of them as cattle food. And I don’t grow them, so I have no idea how to prepare them. Helpful, I know.
The turnips in the next town over are world famous. Seriously. They get mailing labels slapped on them and sent to all corners of the globe. There’s even a turnip festival.
Our friends bring turnips to Thanksgiving every year and they are delicious. He cuts them in large dice and then I think he braises them in butter and roasts them.
This is great! Thanks for all the suggestions. I can’t wait to get the turnips! Wouldn’t it be funny if after all your help I only got like one sad turnip this week? Next I ask Michelle to ask you all for help with mountains and mountains of greens…
Mashed turnips
Boil your turnips starting in cold water until they’re done.
Mash em.
Add heavy cream
Add a ton of butter
Add cheddar
Put lots of salt and pepper
Add fried green onions
Add chopped crispy bacon
Add a whole bunch of herbs, anything with flavour really
Top with sour cream
Maybe, then only maybe, you won’t taste the turnips. A good way of eating a healthy vegetable.
Best turnip options:
1. Mashed turnips with tons of butter, cheese and cream. (As straightforward as they sound: Boil turnips, add delcious fatty things, mash mash mash mash.)
2. Turnip Gratin. My frist experiment went not so well, but I used the recipe at The Pioneer Woman Cooks and the second time, when I was so lazy with grating the cheese, turned out pretty delicious. If you click the link to my blog, I re-posted the recipe on there.
I din’t know what to do with them either when they showed up last fall in our CSA box. Then I found this recipe on Epicurious. It’s FAB-u-LUST
Glazed Turnips
2 lb small to medium (2-inch) turnips
About 1 1/2 cups plus 3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Garnish: chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Peel turnips, then halve horizontally and quarter halves. Arrange turnips in 1 layer in a 12-inch heavy skillet and add enough water (about 1 1/2 cups) to reach halfway up turnips. Add butter, sugar, and salt and boil over moderately high heat, covered, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes. Boil turnips, uncovered, stirring, until tender and water has evaporated, about 8 minutes.
Sauté turnips over moderately high heat, stirring, until golden brown,about 5 minutes more. Add 3 tablespoons water and stir to coat turnips with glaze
Turnips are not my faves, but I can suggest a couple of uses that are pretty good.
1) Mixed roasted veggies. By mixing with other stuff, it disguises the turnips (unlike mashing them & then lying to the family by calling them potatoes, then having to be elsewhere when they discover the truth). In the locavore tradition, this makes an appearance on our Thanksgiving table each year with recurrences over the winter due to the seasonality & storeability of root veg. We usually just wing it, recipe-wise. My fave execution is to mix peeled sliced turnips, peeled but unsliced carrots & parsips, peeled sliced golden beets, unpeeled regular & peeled sweet potato wedges, sliced red onion, quartered red peppers, and broccoli stalks with canola or non-virgin olive oil, acidic liquid + spices & herbs of preference (I like fresh lime juice + curry, and I’ve liked the results with white wine + fresh oregano & basil + cayenne pepper, but solo balsamic also works quite nicely). Roast the roots at 350F for about half an hour, adding the rest at the 15-minutes mark, turning the veg occasionally. The big root veg – the turnips & beets – should be boiled before slicing, or they won’t cook through when roasting.
2) Bashed neeps. A Scottish version of mashed turnips, but with a funner-sounding name. Again, disguisability rules. I don’t have a specific recipe, but you can probably google it. I think leeks & bacon are involved, and that improves many otherwise unpalatable things.
Good luck!
I cannot abide boiled or mashed turnips. Not real sure how I’d deal with roasted ones though they sound marginally better. They are relatively decent raw, cut up in sticks for a crudite with a curry dip or some other sort of dip, or julienned to add some crunch to slaw or a salad. About the only way I’ll eat ’em cooked is to saute them with Vidalia onions in a mix of olive oil and butter until the Vidalias just begin to caramelize.
Otherwise, if you have rabbits, feed ’em to the rabbits. Pesky little devils love turnips.
I hate greens, too. There is nothing you can do to a cooked green, short of disguising it beyond any sort of recognition, that will make me eat it. Which means I leave them out of all those wonderful white bean soups and stuff. Don’t know how I managed to grow up poor, in the South, in the country, and hate greens, but I do.
Three thoughts on turnips: #1- peel, cube and boil with an equal amount of potatoes, and mash as per your usual mashed potato routine.
#2- Fry up a couple slices of bacon, and set aside. Peel dice turnips into 1/2 inch cubes, and saute in bacon fat until tender. Crumble the bacon over top, add salt & pepper and you’re good to go. Yet another thing that can be improved immeasurably with bacon.
#3- Cube and add to vegetable soup. This really does add a certain depth to the soup.
Ditto Tina. My mother always adds them – diced – to her soups, not just vegetable. Cooked up in the broth they don’t really add anything discernable to the flavour, but the addition contributes to texture [and uses up the turnips].
hey everyone, thanks for all the turnips tips!