Turnips

We grow both salad turnips and cooking turnips. You will see salad turnips in your share in both the spring and late fall. In the late fall cooking turnips will also "turn up" in your share.

Cooking Tips

The salad turnip that we grow is called "hakurei", a Japanese turnip that is truly best eaten raw. Its delicate flavor and crisp texture are perfect as is, and cooking tends to make it soggy. Just slice it, thick or thin as you prefer, and add it to salads, appetizer platters, or serve it on its own as a snack or side dish. You will not believe how delicious they are.

Our other turnips can also be eaten raw, grated on a salad or sliced very thin, but their hardy texture also lends them well to cooking. Try quartering them and boiling or steaming for about 15 minutes. Alternately, they can be roasted in the oven as you would potatoes, or sautéed in a pan with some olive oil or butter. A little salt and herbs is all they need for flavoring. Never forget that all turnip greens are edible. They can be sautéed with some olive oil and onion for just a few minutes, being careful not to overcook them, and they will have a pleasant and slightly spicy flavor.

Storage Tips

Hakurei turnips will keep in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator for over a week. Our other turnips will store for over two weeks.

Nutrition

Turnip roots are high in vitamin C, potassium, and calcium. The greens are high in vitamins A, C, and B vitamins, plus potassium, magnesium, and calcium.

History

Turnips have truly fallen from grace in recent years, once having been known as the "vegetable of nobility" in Europe. They were historically an incredibly important crop in Europe, especially in the pre-Columbian era; turnips were even often used to make alcoholic beverages. Turnips are a member of the Brassica, or cabbage family, and were native to west Asia. Hakurei turnips are one of many new varieties of turnip developed in Japan in the 1950s, following World War II.