With winter officially here and festivities well on their way, we cannot wait to start cooking with all of our favourite seasonal vegetables. One of these, is the mighty parsnip which is harvested from late autumn right through to the end of January.
We love parsnips for all the nutritional goodness that they have to offer, particularly being a great source of vitamin C, K and folate – a handy veg to have when winter colds are doing the rounds. Apparently, just one serving of parsnip can provide 25% of your daily Vitamin C needs.
Parsnips are also fantastic sources of soluble and insoluble fibre which is said to help lower blood sugar levels and cholesterol, which may be needed after a lot of feasting over this festive season!
There’s nothing quite like a honey roasted parsnip as part of a Sunday roast, or roughly diced in a warming stew. This glorious vegetable works well in so many winter dishes and we’re currently enjoying our Braised Roots and Orzo recipe from Higgidy: The Veggie Cookbook. In this recipe, parsnips along with their close relative, the carrot, and other root vegetables, are braised until golden. Then, these get mixed with some scrumptious herbs and spices to make an incredibly tasty and warming dish. We’d highly recommend giving this a try now the nights have got darker and chillier.
We’re loving parsnips so much, that this year, we decided to put a slightly different spin on a Christmas inspired pie. Instead of the usual turkey and stuffing, we’ve gone full veggie, creating our Very Merry Parsnip Pie. Inside our classic seeded spelt shortcrust pastry, we’ve added a layer of braised red cabbage, with a creamy crème fraiche sauce filled with chestnuts and root vegetables – including parsnips (of course!), topped with a crispy kale and quinoa crumb. The sweet parsnips combine brilliantly (if we do say so ourselves) with the other veg and offer a bit of bite too! This pie is a great opportunity to eat a bit more veg and is perfect for a meatless Monday or the main event, Christmas Day lunch itself!
We hope that this give you a little bit of veg-spiration for the next couple of months and if you’ve tried some recipes from Higgidy: The Veggie Cookbook, or have tried our Very Merry Parsnip Pie, we’d love to hear your thoughts. You can always pop us a message either on our social media or at thekitchen@higgidy.co.uk.
