Parsnip Purée
Some girls’ boyfriends are persnickety. Mr. English is parsnippity. Frankly, I didn’t know what a parsnip looked like until a year ago. They are tooth-and-nails-tough white carrot-impersonators. Their hard backbone is the iron glove that covers their candy-sweet, velvet fist.
Normally, we just roast them, but we hosted some friends for a Hanukkah dinner, and I needed to dress them up. So I made parnsip puree. Sweet, but hearty. Decadent, but healthy (if you don’t count the half and half). It was gone with the wind. If you want some comfort food that can still play a bit of dress up, this is the veg for you.
BON APP!
Roasted Garlic and Parnsip Purée
Ingredients
- 2 pounds parsnips, peeled, and cut into chunks
- 1 medium white potato, peeled and cut into chunks
- 10 cloves garlic
- 1 ½ tablespoons olive oil
- 2 cups half and half
- 2 cups milk
- 3 tablespoons butter
Procedure
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- On a baking tray with a lip, toss the parnsips, potato, and garlic with the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 1 hour.
- Move the roasted vegetables to the food processor and add the half and half, milk, and butter. Whip until smooth, and serve hot.
I’ve been meaning to try parsnips and this sounds great!
I made these last night. They were mighty sweet after a long roasting, but still tasty.
A wonderful and almost identical root vegetable is parsley root. Parsnips and parsley root look almost exactly the same, but parsley root tends to be a bit smaller, and the taste is slightly different, but parsley root is a beautiful root vegetable one can glace, puree, blanch, whatever you wanted to do with it! Definitely worth trying.
Drago: They are sweet, aren’t they? I think they are very interesting that way, sort of unexpected.
Jason: I love roots–I can’t go a week without celery root. But I’ve never heard of parsley root, and am dying to try it. Is it readily available?