turnips

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I guess I'm in the minority because I love turnips about any way you can cook them. I love the turnip greens, too. When I cook the turnip roots, I usually just cut them into chunks or slices and boil them. Then I add a bit of butter, salt and pepper and dig in. Sometimes, I mash them with butter, salt and pepper. When I get turnips with the greens still on them, I cook the greens and include the turnip roots cut into small chunks. I like to dribble a bit of apple cider vinegar on my greens at the table. Mighty good eating, to my way of thinking.
 
Turnips are the byproduct here as I grow them for the greens.
Turnip, mustard, kale and collards. Slow cooked all day by the gallon with onions and a smoked ham hock (or two), salt, pepper flakes and a pinch of sugar. Put up in quarts in the chest freezer for the winter.
I think I still have 5 gallons with the pot licker to hold me over.
 
I'm glad there are other folks who consider these various vegetables to be good eating. When it comes to food, I do not cull much. I learned this as a child when the rule at our house was that we all sit down to dinner together and we joyfully and gratefully eat whatever mom put on the table. No special meals. This carried over into my years in the military and served me well there. When I got married, my new bride asked me what I liked to eat. I told her that my rule was that whatever she put on the table was exactly what I wanted. I stuck to that rule throughout our 51 years together, much to my wife's pleasure. Of course I'll have to admit that her not being Norwegian, I was never faced with having to eat lutefisk. :barf: :shake: I've got a feeling that such an event would have caused me to break my dining rule. :haha:
 
Whenever the subject of turnips comes up I always think of Burris Rearden. Burris was the University of Kentucky agricultural extension agent for the county where my little farm was located, We had decided to raise some sheep for both wool and meat, and Burris was of immense help in working or way through learning to do that. One of the best bits of husbandry he taught us was that turnips are a marvelous food for sheep in the winter time. Based on his advice we broadcast planted an acre of turnips and let them mature. When winter came we boxed off small sections with portable electric fencing and turned the flock into them. They ate the turnips right in the ground, hollowing them out completely, leaving only the skin in the ground.. And they thrived.

When the turnips first matured in late fall Burris came to take a look and give us advice about what came next. When he was ready to leave he said he thought he might need to take a few turnips for testing, to make certain they were OK for the sheep. I told him to take a couple. He said, no, I didn’t understand, he needed to take some home for him and his family to test at supper time. I laughed and told him there’s an acre, take what you need, but leave some for the sheep. My son gave him a brown paper grocery sack and Burris left to collect his test material. In only a few minutes he was back, looking disheveled and with mud on his hands and the knees of his pants. He had been bent over at the waist pulling turnips from the ground when our big old ram Bubba butted him full-force in the rump and sent him sprawling. We said that couldn’t be, the ram had been a bit sick and was locked is the treatment shed, no way he could get out. Of course we were wrong, here came the ram prancing across the yard. After Burris limped home we put the ram back in the shed and watched him through a window. The door was latched with a plain hook-and-loop screen door type latch. That sheep went right to the door, used his nose to lift the latch and walked out pretty as you please. Burris, my son and I had many a good laugh over the years remembering Burris’s turnip test. Burris was always a bit shy of Bubba after that, don’t know why.

Spence
 
I like turnips with greens, and may have thin-sliced them and fried them in tempura...can't remember. Love rutabagas and regularly order them with country food. The way they cook them around here, I think they add sugar to them. They're kinda hard to peel as they have wax applied to the outside to preserve them.

There's no green or root of a green I don't like except beets, which I like pickled a lot. Never had them un-pickled.
 
Gene L said:
Beets...Never had them un-pickled.
Roast or boil until done, peel (when cool enough to handle, I use cold water to cool), slice and season with oil, vinegar (I prefer Balsamic, though red wine vinegar will work), salt and fresh cracked black pepper.
 
From an 1800"s cookbook...
Subtitled "cookery for invalids"

Vegetable soup.
Take one turnip, one potato and one onion. Let them be sliced and boiled in one quart of water for an hour. Add as much salt as is agreeable, and pour the whole upon a piece of dry toast. This forms an agreeable substitute for animal food, and may be given when the latter is inadmissible.
 

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