I definitely enjoy it when I have a previous blind spot in my culinary knowledge uncovered for me, which happened on Friday. I have a customer who’s pre-diabetic, so she didn’t want any sweet potatoes in her meals. However, of the 70+ recipes I have pre-made for customers, she chose two recipes that had that ingredient. For a couple of months now, I’ve noticed parsnips at my local grocery store, and just had never had an excuse to use them before…and now I did. I recommended parsnips as a replacement for the sweet potatoes, and she was on board. Time to give a new ingredient a shot.
To say that I was blown away by the flavor is an understatement. The recipes I prepared were both variations of a chicken with root vegetables recipe, just with a different sauce, so they were baked, and the flavor of baked parsnips is this fantastic light sweetness, with a delightful little crunch and a finish that’s extremely clean. In conjunction with the butternut squash, yellow onion and chicken in both dishes, the texture and flavor worked *perfectly* with the dish, and is something that I’m going to have to dive deeper into going forward.
I looked into the nutrition information for parsnips, and what I found at https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-parsnip#1 is that not only do parsnips have a wonderful flavor, but they have a ton of fiber, loads of vitamin C, high amounts of potassium, and very few calories…I saw 100 calories per cup of parsnips. Wonderful flavor and very good for you? I’m definitely sold!
For my next project I’m going to be going through a host of my other recipes that have sweet potatoes in them (since that was my go-to for a root vegetable with flavor) and see if replacing them with parsnips is an option. I think that there are a LOT of recipes that can use a boost from a fresh new ingredient, and I definitely look forward to seeing where this goes.
Finally, something like this just reinforces why I’m a chef. When’s the last time you, or even anybody you know got excited about a new (to them)ingredient? My array of emotions over this simple root vegetable is not ordinary…it’s fantastic. 🙂
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