Swedes vs Turnips

[Primrose]

Our regular Burns Night Haggis meal reminded me of this this long term argument about swedes versus turnips, and I'm sure we've debated this before on here but darned if I can find it. However this is an interesting discussion on the topic:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... -or-turnip

What really amuses me that the food manufacturers will never call a spade a shovel, especially in pickle ingredients, where it's always listed as Rutaba, to make it sound more exotic. Whilst I believe this may be the American name for us, I've never known anybody over here refer to it by that name.

[Tony Hague]

Further to the article, I would say both taste rubbish and are fit only for cattle. And Spanish black radish (which taste like a particularly nasty turnip), too.

[Primrose]

When we first got married, my husband told me had a total aversion to swede which his mother always used to serve mashed to destruction. So I cooked some for myself one day, serving it with black pepper & butter. My husband didn't even recognise the vegetable in that form, asked what it was and didn't believe me when I told him. When I gave him a tiny piece to try, his face lit up and he said "Is this really swede or are you trying to kid me, because this is delicious."

From then on he was totally converted. However, my mother in law never forgave me for getting him to enjoy a food that for 20 odd years he'd wrinkled his nose at and refused to eat.

I'm just wondering if you could make Swede cake with grated swede for sweetness & moisture in the same way that you make Carrot cake. Has anybody every tried it?

[oldherbaceous]

Afternoon Tony, i like both Turnip and Swede, but there again i have been called, a beast of the field, on more than one occasion.

[PLUMPUDDING]

I'm with Primrose on this, we always grow swedes rather than turnips and serve them mashed with butter and black pepper too - lovely. If you mix them with mashed potatoes they make nice potato cakes too with a few herbs or anything else you fancy mixed in made into rounds and fried.

When growing them you have to make sure they don't dry out when they are germinating and small seedlings. We quite often get a dry spell at that time of year, so keep the soil moist until they get going.

[haggis]

Being a Haggis from Aberdeen (and what a slur against my city in that article!!) I have to say that I am most definitely in the Neeps = swedes camp. I never tasted a turnip until I stayed in Suffolk for a couple of years and you rarely see them in the shops here. Neeps on the other hand are available all year round and at the moment they are the only things left standing in the allotments. All of the brassicas have keeled over - even the kale - with the snow. I suspect that that is why neeps are so common up here - they are very hardy indeed and would have been a winter staple along with kale.

[Colin_M]

To follow Primrose's point, I never liked swede as a child. I now like it and eat it regularly. This may be because my tastes have changed, or because we now cook it differently from how my mum did (it used to be generally plain bolied & mashed -> a slightly watery mush).

Sadly I've never got to like turnips, but at least that leaves room in the plot for other stuff.

[Monika]

I love mashed swedes - with plenty of pepper, butter and just a pinch of salt, but I find turnips too watery and prefer to use kohlrabi, a sort of "refined" turnip taste but more solid and crunchy.

[Primrose]

Yes, I'm definitely a kohl rabi fan too. Love them raw, chopped finely into matchstick size chips and served in a salad. Frustratingly the first crop of the year that I grow always does much better than the later crop which often seems to bolt on me. Don't know whether it's my garden or something to do with them not much liking warmer temperatures.

[Tigger]

We like them all - little white turnips, especially roasted, swedes in a stew or mashed, especially with carrots and kohlrabi raw in coleslaw or roasted or mashed.

[Primrose]

We love sliced kohl rabi in Chinese stir fries. It's just about the closest texture we can find to water chestnuts.