Home › Vegetables › Browned Turnips
Browned Turnips
Pare and cut into slices crosswise six good-sized turnips. Boil twenty minutes, drain in a colander. Put two tablespoonfuls of drippings into a frying-pan; when hot, dust the turnips with sugar, put into the fat, turn carefully until the slices are nicely browned. Serve with duck or goose.
A simple two-stage vegetable dish: parboil, then pan-brown in fat. The only real technique is keeping the slices intact through the turn.
- Cut thicknessSlice crosswise about a half-inch thick. Thinner rounds collapse during boiling and will not survive being turned in the pan.
- Twenty minutes is longModern turnips, especially the small purple-topped ones, are tender in 8-12 minutes. Boil until a knife meets slight resistance, not until soft, since the frying stage cooks them further. Overboiled slices break apart in the fat.
- Drain and dryAfter the colander, spread the slices on a towel for a few minutes. Surface water spits in hot fat and prevents browning.
- DrippingsRendered poultry or beef fat from the roasting pan. Duck fat is the obvious match given the serving suggestion; clarified butter or a neutral oil works, though butter alone will scorch at browning heat.
- The sugarA light dusting only, perhaps a teaspoon across the whole batch. It is there to caramelize and pick up colour quickly, not to sweeten. Too much and it burns black before the turnip takes any colour.
- Turn onceLay the slices in a single layer, leave them undisturbed until the underside is well browned, then turn. Crowding the pan steams them; work in two batches if needed.
- YieldSix good-sized turnips serve six to eight as a side. Season with salt and pepper after browning, as salt draws out moisture.
Turnips were a winter staple in Britain and North America long before the potato displaced them, cheap, storable through the cold months, and grown as much for livestock as for the table, which did nothing for their reputation. Pairing them with duck or goose is a matter of balance: both birds are fatty, and the faint bitterness of turnip cuts the richness, a pairing found in French and English cookery in dishes like canard aux navets. The dusting of sugar here is doing what a modern cook would call glazing, encouraging caramelization on the cut surface. Cookbooks of this period commonly call for drippings, the fat saved from roasting, and reusing that fat was thrift as much as flavour.