A super-healthy mashed turnips recipe! Soft turnips cooked in lots of fried onions, garlic and fenugreek is a delicious way to eat this root vegetable.
All my life I hated turnips and wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole …. and then my mother-in-law introduced me to this mashed turnips recipe with lots of fried onions.
To my utter surprise, I actually relished them cooked this way. Who would have thought turnips (turnips!) would taste great with onions?
The sweetness of onions counters the strong smell and taste of turnips. The fenugreek and garlic give it a solid punch!
Try making mashed turnips and I promise, you will be pleased with the result even if you're not a fan of this vegetable.
Here are a few commonly asked questions about turnips that I've tried to answer in this post:
Are turnips better for you than potatoes?
You bet. Turnips are a great alternative to potatoes as they have less than a quarter of the carbohydrates found in potatoes. Mashed Turnips is the perfect recipe to try if you're following any of these diets: low-carb, keto, vegan or even paleo.
How do you get the bitterness out of turnips?
The trick to this is to not choose big (as in giant-sized) turnips. The bigger the turnips, the more bitter they will be. Go for the small ones and you'll find that not only are they not bitter, they are actually more tasty.
Frying turnips in onions also gets rid of the bitterness.
How do you make mashed turnips?
Peel and boil the turnips, mash them, then cook them briefly in a special masala. That, in short, is the whole process.
I like boiling the turnips in a pressure cooker as it is much faster than doing it in an open pan. If you have small, evenly sized turnips, this step shouldn't take more than 10 minutes, tops. Turn off the heat after the first two whistles have sounded.
When the pressure releases, take the turnips out of the water and mash them with a fork just as you would potatoes.
While the turnips are being pressure cooked, make the masala: put some fenugreek seeds in hot oil, add lots of thinly sliced onions and fry until golden brown, add garlic, salt, a little mango powder and a couple green chillies. Add the boiled and mashed turnips to this and cook for a few minutes. Top with fresh coriander leaves and you're done!
mashed turnips
Ingredients
- 8 small turnips peeled and halved
- 1 large onion sliced finely
- 1 heaped tablespoon garlic minced
- ¼ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
- ½ teaspoon mango powder amchur
- 1 green chilli sliced finely
- 4 tablespoon cooking oil
- A few sprigs fresh coriander
- salt
Instructions
- Fill a saucepan with water and dunk the turnip chunks into it. The water should cover the chunks completely. Boil till soft, around 20 minutes. Pour the contents of the saucepan into a colander with another pan beneath it to catch the liquid.
- When the contents of the colander cool down completely, take each turnip chunk in your hand and squeeze gently to get rid of the excess liquid. Mash with a fork.
- In a pan, heat the oil and add the fenugreek seeds. When they turn golden, put in the onions. Saute till brown, then tip in the garlic, mango powder and salt.
- Add the mashed turnips to the fried onions and saute for some more time, about 15 minutes. The turnips should lose their white colour and turn a nice reddish brown. Once done, put in the coriander leaves and green chilli and mix thoroughly. Serve hot with rotis or any Indian bread.
Notes
- Don’t be tempted to buy large turnips as these can be stronger in taste and even bitter sometimes. Choose small to medium sized turnips.
- Mango powder or amchur is available in Indian grocery stores. It adds an extra tang to this dish but is completely optional. You can bypass it if you don’t want to go to the trouble of procuring it.
- I don't like to throw away the turnip-y liquid collected in step 1 because it is rich in nutrients. So I put it in the dal I'm cooking for the day. No loss, no waste!
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