So we picked up a bag of parsnips at the store yesterday. I’ve heard of them and found where they are considered low-carb. They’re not exceptionally low-carb so if you’re working towards or trying to stay in a ketogenic state then you should probably consider skipping them.
I’ve never had these strange vegetables that look like a malformed, white carrot.
I sliced the top off of them and inhaled their aroma. The flesh of the parsnip smells like a combination of carrot, ginger, and some sort of citrus. I also noticed how light they seemed to be for their size. Their similarity to carrots and the fact that they belong in the same family made me expect they’d weigh about the same. Not so. They are much lighter, less dense, than their carrot cousins.
I peeled them, sliced them, and dropped them into a pot of hot oil. They fried up nicely into chips. Just make sure you don’t walk away while their cooking. This site points out the quickness with which they will go from soggy white yuckiness to burnt, black nasty in a few seconds. Tis true. While none of them made it to the burned stage, they are the only thing I’ve dropped into hot oil that you can literally watch the color change on. Pull them out before it’s too late and you end up with a batch of nice, browned chips.
I cut the thinner ends of them into fries after slicing off thin bits for chips. My opinion? Don’t go with fries with a parsnip. When the outside is perfect, the fibrous inside is still a it too uncooked for my taste. I imagine it’d be the same for most people.
I tried a couple of other experiments with them. I whipped them into something was an attempt at mashed potatoes. So uh…. that didn’t work out quite right.
It was good enough but even better, it gave me a great idea after the wonderful wife tasted them.
The other bit that they can do was so excellent my brother-in-law, who happened to drop by, declared what he tasted to be amazing. When it’s perfected I’ll post an actual recipe here.
Merry Christmas!
This article was first published on December 7, 2014 and was recovered using AI and web.archive.org.