Joanne Roach (00:13)
Hello and welcome back to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies and this is our regular monthly slot where I run through some money saving tips to make the fresh seasonal fruit and veg that we've been buying last longer, go further and store better. The idea is to help you get the best out of your fresh produce so we're spending less, wasting less food and actually getting around to eating what we've bought.
As you might know from previous months, I build my content around seasonal produce and my main product that I sell is a set of 12 children's books that are set in a veggie patch. Each book focuses on different fruit and veg that's in season that month, and because they were chosen carefully to make sure that children explore lots of different plant families during the whole year, I'm using of produce from the books to talk through storage and money tips with you guys so that we cover them all during the course of our year too.
This month, the book of the month is Parsnip Meets A Snowman, so our foods this time are root vegetables like parsnips, carrots, beetroot and potatoes. Whether you've grown some and you need to use them up to make space for your new planting, or you're finding that they're cheaper in the shops compared to other times of year, this is the episode to make the most of them.
Root vegetables, as the name suggests, are foods where we eat the swollen root or tuber from under the ground. We often talk about root veg to include some vegetables where actually the swollen part we eat grows mostly above the ground like beetroot and celeriac, but these are just plant varieties that we've bred over time to behave that way. Because most root vegetable plants develop those swollen roots to store energy to enable them to survive the winter so that next year they can flower and set seed, they are mostly fine to stay in the soil over winter. And if you have a veg patch, you may well still have beetroot and parsnips out there now. But because the ground is really hard to be digging in in the winter, and crops can also get lost to pests and wet soggy ground if it rains a lot, a lot of root veg is taken up at the beginning of the winter and then stored in big cool dark stores to keep them in limbo for as long as possible so when they're shipped to shops they have a longer shelf life.
I'm sure you'll have had an experience of root veg going floppy or bendy when it gets old or going slimy and starting to sprout, so we want to try and mimic the best bits of being in the ground for as long as possible. Our predecessors who were growing all their own food often stored their root veg in boxes in layers of damp sand so that they would stay moist but without rotting, and they put them in dark cellars to stop them sprouting too. Lots of clever allotment growers still do the same thing now.
So when you're storing root veg at home, we want to be looking to create those conditions in a less messy way in our kitchen. So we don't want to wash them until we cook them as they're used to being stored in dirt and we don't want to pierce their skins. We don't want them to be waterlogged either. So if they're in a plastic package when you get them, then take them out so they don't sweat and rot. But we also don't want them to dry out totally. So for carrots, parsnips and beetroot, put them in a container with a little water or a damp kitchen towel so that there's a bit of atmospheric water, but not too much. And then pop them in the fridge to mimic the cold ground temperature. This way they can keep for many weeks. You can also use a plastic freezer bag, but either leave it a tiny bit open or poke holes in it so the moisture doesn't build up too much.
The same advice for carrots and parsnips works well for beetroot. Keep them whole, don't scrub them until you cook them and keep them in a pack with a little ventilation and a tiny bit of moisture. If you haven't got the fridge space for any of these and you're able to use them within a week or two,then a cool dark cupboard is better than out on the worktop.
And if any of these veg do go bit bendy or soft, you can revive them by putting them in cold water and leaving them overnight and they'll swell back up again.
Potatoes will also last longest if kept in the fridge. There used to be advice about not doing for a very specific reason, which was about some of the sugars in potatoes, but there's now been lots of research on it and it was all disproven. So the fridge is definitely safe and therefore the way to keep them the longest. If, and it's a big if, you've got the space. If like me you never have enough space in the fridge for the amount of potatoes you go through then a cool dark place is still the next best thing.
When you're buying root veg from the shops, check that they feel firm and unbending and if they're in bags rotate the bags a bit to see if there's any slimy bits or soft bits starting. If any of them are starting to sprout leaves from the tops, then remove those tops and that will stop them from trying to use up the sugars in the roots to make those new plants.
And wherever you store your root veg, don't store them with onions next to them because the ethylene gas that onions give off can speed up sprouting. If your potatoes do sprout, just cut the sprouts off, they are safe to eat. You should, however, discard any potatoes or parts of potatoes that have started to go green because this means it's been in too much light and it will contain a compound called solanine which is actually toxic to your tummy. So never eat green ones.
If you find you're getting behind with using things up and one or two things are starting to go over or you've got a load of these veggies in one go, then you could obviously absolutely freeze root vegetables. I'm going to hand over now to a regular monthly chat with the lovely Kate Hall from the full freezer about the principles of freezing root vegetables.
Joanne (05:21)
So Kate, our freezer geek. This month's food of the month is parsnips and all of our activities are about root vegetables. So could you tell us if families are wanting to preserve some of the root vegetables they've grown or ones that are cheap in the shops, how would they go about doing that with their freezer?
Kate (05:38)
Sure. So I would always recommend with root veg that it's a good idea to blanch it first. So blanching is the process of putting your root veg pan of boiling water. It already needs to be boiling. You want it to come back up to the boil within a minute. If it doesn't, you've got too much in the pan, reduce it down. And then you just want it to be in there, it varies from veg to veg, but it's literally a couple of minutes. So it would be sort of between two to five minutes, dependent on what the vegetable is and how big the pieces are. So I've got various my Can I Freeze It channel, which would give some you basically just blanch it, which takes a couple of minutes. You then move it into ice water, which stops it cooking. And this process of blanching is to deactivate enzymes that the quality of the food whilst it's in the freezer. So it helps the quality and keep it so that it will cook nicely when you cook it through. And then, yeah, I would just dry it off, pop it on a tray, that can go into your freezer. Make sure everything's spread out so it's not touching each other so you don't end up with a big clump of food.
And once it's frozen through,can go in a freezer bag and then when you want to cook with it, you can just cook from frozen as if that food was fresh. So whether it's slicing things up to boil them like carrots or with your parsnips, could have them cut into batons and you could roast them. you could either do roast potatoes, you could make mashed potato and you could freeze that. You can do jacket potatoes and freeze jacket potatoes. There are so many different options. So yeah, definitely come and check out Can I Freeze It? And if there's anything that isn't there and you want to know, then just drop me a message and I'll do my best to answer.
Joanne Roach (07:31)
So that's the general methodology behind freezing them. And Kate is also a big fan of freezing grated carrot to use in all sorts of recipes. So I'm going to play the audio here from one of her reels that's just about that.
Kate Hall (07:43)
We love having a stash of carrots in the freezer and whilst you can freeze them in slices, diced or batons, this is the quickest and easiest option if you've got a stack at risk of going to waste. Simply wash, dry and grate your carrots, then spread them out on a lined tray, leaving a corner clear so you can prise them out once they're frozen. Freeze until solid and then snap the grated carrot into shards and store in a freezer bag. To use it, chuck it straight into dishes like bolognese, pasta sauces and even your porridge straight from the freezer.
Joanne Roach (08:16)
So that's freezing. And for the listeners who are into dehydrating foods, you can absolutely dehydrate root veg. But think about what you'll use the dried foods for before you go to all that trouble. Root vegetables are generally pretty cheap and make sure that you want to use the storage space. You can dehydrate grated vegetables and that's great for adding handfuls straight into a soup or stew. You can either dehydrate carrots on their own, parsnips on their own, or you can mix them all together. A bit like the dried veg you get in noodle pots, only nicer. Or you can dehydrate them in chunks and they keep better that way. And then later you can take a batch and blend them into a powder and add spoonfuls into anything saucy to add lots of extra fibre and nutrients. I will link to a video on YouTube of someone who does this a lot and talks you through how to do it.
OK, so we've stored our root veg, but now we have some to use up. What can you make to use up extra parsnips, carrots, beetroot and potatoes?
Always the first obvious answer is soup. Carrots make amazing soups. They add sweetness and bulk to other soups too, like sweet potato or tomato soups. You can also add red lentils for some extra fibre and protein. I'll link to a recipe for a carrot and lentil soup in the show notes, as well as our household favourite, which is carrot and ginger. Parsnip also makes lovely soup too, especially with something warm added to it, like ginger or mustard, but it can be an acquired taste for kids, so it might be one of the ones where you give them a lot of bread to dip. You can also mix apples with parsnip in soups to sweeten the first impression. Beetroot actually makes excellent soup. You just need some onions, some stock and a tin of tomatoes alongside the beetroot. It's really hearty and earthy. Be warned though that if you eat a large bowl of it, it will make your wee a bit pink the next day, so don't go booking a doctor's appointment. It's quite fun for kids to see if theirs has gone pink if they eat a big enough bowl. Leftovers from all of these soups freeze really well.
That pink colour in the beetroot also lends itself to another good beetroot recipe, which is beetroot risotto, which might sound a bit unusual, but it's actually really lovely, soft and earthy. The trick is to add plenty of mature cheese or nutritional yeast, which balances off that earthiness and it's an amazing bright pink risotto. Beetroot is also really good for adding colour to mashed potato. It's so violently pink that kids can often be intrigued and tempted to try it.
In episode 42, I talked about things that you can add to foods to up the fruit and veg and carrots were mentioned to be added to lots of things, either grated or pureed, such as pasta sauce, bolognese, soup, cakes, and even things like nuggets and meatballs. Grated beetroot is also great in chocolatey cakes and in vegetarian burgers and meatballs because it not only adds some texture, but it the colour a little bit more meaty looking. I'll link to that episode in the show notes too, because there's quite a lot of recipe suggestions over there.
For potatoes, the possibilities are obviously endless, from favourites like oven wedges and mashed potato,or baking or air frying random ones that are left over from the pack in their jackets to go on the sides of things they keep well in the fridge when they've been cooked like that. We particularly like an oven version of saute potatoes where you cut them up into small cubes and just boil or microwave them for a few minutes. I tend to microwave them for about four minutes with a splash of water and then pop them on a baking tray in a hot oven or in the air fryer with a splash of oil and salt and pepper. You can get the breakfast hash type feeling of the small pieces without all the extra butter and dirty pan washing from when you do proper saute potatoes. These are fab with fried eggs or in breakfast burritos or on a mixed salad bowl cold.
You can also grate potato, rinse it and dry it off and then cook it for a little bit to put into things like pancakes or frittatas or omelettes or waffles. All of these ideas that use small pieces or grated are really good when you're starting to have the last bit of the bag and they're starting to go over and you're having to chop bits of sprouts off them.
Obviously don't forget that you can also add mashed potatoes as a filler to more expensive things to bulk them out and make them more child-friendly, like adding them to tinned fish to make into fried or oven-baked fish cakes, or to leftover veggies to make bubble and squeak. And while we're on the subject of sort of mashed things in patties, I forgot to say that parsnips also make great little croquettes. And I have a recipe on my website with full instructions and pictures for kids to make if you want to help them get their hands on some root veg.
So that's my roundup of storing and using up root vegetables. I'll pop some links to Kate's videos on freezing all of these in the show notes, along with quite a few recipes for some of the suggestions that I made. I'll see you again on Thursday for another episode. And in the meantime, happy eating.
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