Get back to your roots: A Root Vegetable Primer

Root vegetables are easy to grow and offer so much nutritionally (and deliciously, too!)

I thought I’d put together a little primer for you to get all you can from root vegetables including how easy they are to grow and how to prepare them!

Carrots. Perhaps the first food that comes to mind when you think of root vegetables, carrots are simple to grow (you just pop the seed in the soil, water, and wait, really!), and they’re ready to eat as soon as they come out of the ground. It’s always such a treat to go out to the garden and pull out a carrot, wipe it on the grass, and bite into it. Carrots are a staple in my house. I use them every time I make bone broth and soups and put them in salads whenever I can. If you’re cooking them as a side dish, try not to overcook them or they turn to mush. If you haven’t tried roasting carrots before, I highly recommend this method, sweet and delicious! Carrots are extremely high in carotenoids and beta-carotene, offering a number of health benefits.

Beets. One of my favorite roots, beetroot is grown easily like carrots, and I especially love that I can eat the root and the leaves of the plant. You can eat beets raw in your green juices or even shaved into a salad. But most commonly, beets are steamed, roasted, or boiled. I enjoy cooking sliced beets in butter and lemon juice with salt and pepper. Absolutely delicious, especially if you add the beet greens in at the end of the cooking time! Beets, with their deep purple color, are full of nutrients. They contain powerful compounds that protect against certain birth defects, cancers, and heart disease.

Parsnips. Another easy-to-plant vegetable to consider for your garden, the creamy white parsnip is delicious. Their taste is really nothing like carrots—they’re slightly sweeter and they are quite mild in flavor. Parsnips are most commonly cooked as carrots are, but I adore them drizzled with oil and roasted in the form of parsnip fries. They are also delicious when cooked with carrots, beets and other root vegetables. Yum! Parsnips are a great source of vitamins and minerals, particularly copper and Vitamin A.

Parsley root. There is a special variety of parsley that is grown for its large parsnip-like root rather than just for its leaves (though you can eat the leaves if you like). Parsley root is most often used as an aromatic because it tastes a bit like carrot, celeriac (celery root), and parsley all mixed together. It’s difficult to describe. Like most root vegetables, it’s easy to grow parsley root, so why not give it a go? Parsley root is quite good used raw in coleslaw or roasted with a mixture of other roots. Parsley root is an excellent source of folic acid, flavonoids, and antioxidants.

Rutabaga. I am referring to the tan-colored root with the purple ring around the top. (Turnips are white and are much smaller.) It isn’t hard to grow rutabagas, but their roots will ripen best when the weather is cool. They have to be planted so that they have time to mature when it’s nice and cool—factor in that they will need up to 100 days from the time they’re planted to the time they’re harvested to help you figure that out. I love eating crunchy raw rutabaga strips, but I also enjoy them in fall soups or mashed with sweet potatoes. Rutabagas are sulfur veggies with cancer-fighting properties.

Turnip. If you plant your turnips late in August, you will still be able to enjoy your harvest as turnips don’t mind the cooler temps. You can eat turnips raw or cooked. As a matter of fact, you can treat cook it exactly the same as you would rutabagas. One thing important to know about turnips is that they start to lose their sweetness the longer you cook them! And don’t forget to add those turnip greens to your salads for a little boost of nutrition, too! Turnips are very high in Vitamin C, so eat up!

Celeriac (Celery root). Celeriac, commonly referred to as celery root, is one of the ugliest vegetables I can think of, but it’s been a great friend in the kitchen because it makes a great stand-in for white potatoes. I would not recommend celery root for a new gardener. This plant needs a long growing season (plan for 120 days after a two-week germination period), and its seedlings can be finicky. By the way, celery root is not actually the root of the celery plant, but it is a relative. It also doesn’t really taste like celery, but it has a nice mild earthy flavor. After you peel your celery root, you can grate it into a salad or cook it up like you would a potato. This veggie is full of fiber, antioxidants, and minerals.

Sweet potato. I’m not going to lie to you. Sweet potatoes are not difficult to grow, especially in the south, but man oh man they can be a pain in the you know what. Sweet potatoes can totally take over your garden with their invasive creeping vines, and they must be harvested regularly and really managed well. Sweet potatoes do contain a ton of antioxidants and minerals and definitely belong on your grocery list if you’re not going to grow them yourself. One of my favorite ways to cook them is to put them in the slow cooker on low first thing in the morning. Then I can have perfectly cooked sweet potatoes at dinner time!

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0 Responses

  1. Thank you so much for this article. I am going to try some of these roots in my own meal plans. This was really informative.

  2. kinda funny theres no onion listed here. i eat onion like a veggie. fry up a bunch in a sat fat, salt n devour. yum, esp with an egg or 3 on top or under a hamburger or two. even great bed for veggies or greens. onion loses its bite when cooked n even gets somewhat sweet.

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