Perhaps you've passed that section of the produce aisle in your local grocery store where they have the vegetables that most people don't know how to cook. Vegetables like celery root, parsnips, turnips, and rutabaga.
Although rutabagas have been grown in America for over 200 years, they remain uncommon to American palates, which is a shame. This vegetable is high in nutrients, including beta carotene, is easy to prepare, and has a sweet taste. Rutabagas are much larger than the purple and white turnips we see in the store. This humble root looks like an oversized yellow turnip that has a dark purple top. It also smells like a turnip, but turns a golden yellow when cooked. It can keep for several weeks in the crisper drawer or months in a root cellar. They are a cross between a wild cabbage and a turnip. They are also called a Swedish turnip or a yellow turnip. In England, Australia, and New Zealand, a rutabaga is called a swede. Originally from Northern Europe, it was a popular food for a long time, until after World War I. After the war, rutabagas were one of the few fresh foods available, and people got tired of eating them. As a result, rutabagas got an unfair reputation as a "famine food."
Select rutabagas that are firm and heavy, with no holes or bruises. To prepare, simply trim the ends and peel off the skin with a vegetable peeler. The rutabaga can be boiled and mashed, roasted, grated raw into salads, and cooked into soups. Here are some ways rutabaga is enjoyed around the world:
Finland
• Roasted and served with meat in a casserole called "lanttulaatikko."
• Soups
Sweden & Norway
• Cooked and mashed with potatoes and carrots in "rotmos" (root mash.)
Scotland
• Rutabaga and potatoes are boiled and mashed separately to make a dish called "tatties and neeps."
Canada
• Baked in meat pies
Some rutabaga recipes to try:
Smoked Paprika and Rutabaga Bisque - Chowhound
Rutabaga Puff - About.com Southern Food
Rutabaga Apple Scallop - About.com Southern Food
Carrots and Rutabagas with Lemon and Honey - Bon Appetit
Hearty Rutabaga, Turnip, and Carrot Soup - Bon Appetit
(Image: Kathryn Hill)
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People consider this a "mystery food"? How weird.. (at least from my perspective). I put them in stew or in my combination of veggies for roasting (with whole cloves of peeled garlic, carrots, cubed squash, tiny halved potatoes, beets, sweet potatoes, rosemary and olive oil).. but my favourite is raw. They're so sweet and yummy!
I have this every week on my sunday dinner, carrot and swede mash. My Nana also uses it in lots of Spanish stews - definitely not a mystery food in our house! Haha
When I'm at the farmers market or grocery store I pick up anything that looks pretty or interesting even if I had no idea how to prepare it. When I get home I use one of my favs How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and if that fails me (which it rarely does) I just google it.
I just picked up some rutabagas the other day. I use them in stews and mashes all the time, but I had the idea that since I use them pretty much anywhere I can use a potato, I'd try roasting them. Does anyone else have an experience with roasted 'bagas?
They are delicious roasted, I like to mix carrot, potato, turnip, parsnip, and rutabaga. Wonderful in stew too!
This is one of those foods people write off as yuck when in reality it is sweet and divine.
I've only ever roasted them when they're cut up, which they do lovely
I've served them roasted in tandem with pears to go alongside a nice leg of lamb. There were no leftovers, if that means anything. :)
Spain: cook with chick peas, cardoon, a piece of potato, a couple carrots, some celery, turnip, chicken, pork and beef bones (a bit meaty, please). Add salt. Take out the broth and make a rice soup with it. Enjoy the soup as a starter and then eat the meat pulling it off the bones and the veggies. Violà, you just ate a Valencian Cocido!
Love rutabegas, though I call them turnips. My family always eats them mashed at Thanksgiving.
@xieta that sounds delicious!
If you have a food dehydrator, cut them into thickish slices and dry them out - they are unbelievable!
I love swedes! Mashed, in soups, roasted... it doesn't matter, I love them.
I love rutabegas! :) My aunt would make them every Thanksgiving & Christmas and they were always the first leftover I would go for the very next day.
It always suprises me when people say they never heard of them. The different receipes listed above sound delicious!
Mashed with buttermilk=amazing.
I adore rutabaga, celery root, turnips... Last winter, in fact, I tried to come up with some marketing slogans for rutabaga, or at least vote for calling it "swede" so people would at least try it:
http://kateflaim.com/2009/02/the-vegetables-of-winter-turnips-and-swede/
My mom sautes them in butter, sprinkles with salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar, and then deglazes the pan with Marsala. This is so good!
Turnips and rutagabas are two different roots. Turnips are white-white, and rutabagas are more tan/offwhite. Turnips are more bitter and rutabagas sweeter.
Certainly not a mystery ingredient in my family. In Québec province, at the end of the summer, most people usually make "boulli" (a boiled dinner, a light broth stew, would be some kind of translation) cabbage, rutabaga, carrots, potatoes,oinions, a little lard, a little veal cubes and then boiled for couple of hours... total comfort food.
One of my fav' side dish when I was a kid was mashed potatoes, rutabagas and carrots...yum !
Swede is a very familiar veg in the UK, it's great in soups and stews and essential in a Cornish pasty, but mashed swede is the best - a potato added to the mash makes for a creamier mash and make sure you add lots of butter and pepper - Yum! Especially good with Roast Beef or Lamb and it's always part of my Christmas dinner.
In the UK it used to be a Halloween tradition to make lanterns out of swedes (we called them turnip lanterns though).
When I was a kid we used to make the lanterns for halloween then keep them in water and take them out them for Guy Fawkes (nov 5th). They are really hard work to hollow out - we'd always get blisters! I used to eat little bits of raw swede. I still like it though I'm sure it's not a good thing to eat raw.
These days you mainly see pumpkin lanterns instead - kids want Halloween to be like it is in the US films and cartoons :-( But I think turnip lanterns are much spookier with their pointy whiskery faces: http://www.livinginseason.com/tag/halloween/
My Swedish grandma once told my brother that his big toes were as big as "rutabaggies." It was so gross and put me off of them until, well, forever. I sometimes eye them at the store, but haven't gotten over the idea of eating something that looks like big toes. :(
On this island (Britain) we do carve them up for halloween, a cheaper version of pumpkin, which were scarce when I was a child. We also mash them with potato and butter, which is truly delicious. But my new favourite way of eating them is in a salad with an Asia inspired dressing. How things change! I love this site, glad to find you here. Happy time, lee (www.thebeachhousekitchen.wordpress.com)