Turnips!
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| Noah Bogdonoff and Amanda Treco tackle our turnip crop. |
With turnip harvesting season upon us, we found ourselves with a wheelbarrow full of turnips and no idea what to do with them. We decided to freeze most of the turnip yield for later use because turnips tend not to last well after harvesting. Here's how we did it:
The first step in preparing the turnips is to cut off the turnip greens. These can be used in cooking and are similarly flavored to mustard greens. Smaller leaves are preferable for eating since the larger leaves have a bitter taste. This taste can be lessened by pouring off the water from initial boiling and replacing it with fresh, cold water. The turnip roots themselves are tasty raw and can also be cooked in a wide variety of recipes ranging from sweet to savory. After peeling and cutting the turnips into cubes, we prepared the turnips for freezing by blanching them in hot water for two minutes, and then transferring them into ice cold water in order to stop the cooking process. This step is crucial because it helps the turnips retain their nutrients.
We ended up with six airtight containers to be frozen. After doing some research, root vegetables seem to best for up to a year after freezing. Hopefully this plentiful bounty of turnips will be put to use in tasty and nutritious recipes this coming winter.
