Friday, April 13, 2018

At root

Regardless of what Wikipedia - or anyone else - tells you, parsnips are not much like carrots. They look very much the same, except off-white instead of orange. The flavor is a little in between carrot, raw potato, and ginger. The texture is where the difference really comes in. Carrots are crunchy. You can just bite into them with a snap and eat them raw. With parsnips your chewing this fibrous stuff that doesn't quite taste right. They seem like they'd be better for soups and stews, absorbing the flavor of the broth.

They'd also make capital snowman noses, almost as pale as the snow itself. Something to think about when winter, just now departing us, rolls around again.

2 comments:

susan said...

Parsnips are okay but, as you say, definitely not a substitute for carrots. A similar vegetable is the turnip, especially delicious when cooked and mashed with potatoes. The problem with them is that they're so very dense cutting raw ones can be a dangerous undertaking.

Parsnip noses on snowmen is something I'll try to remember next time I'm in the mood to build one.

Ben said...

Yeah, turnips look to be pretty tough. Which actually makes sense, because the edible part is the root, holding everything in the ground. It's a break for us that carrots are relatively thin, so easier to cut up. As I recently found out, the orange coloring is a result of selective breeding within the last couple of centuries.

I think we're just past the snowing stage, although who knows in this crazy year? Something to keep in mind for December or January, though.