Turnip Steaks on your Thanksgiving Table

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that some of you reading this are vegetarian, or know a vegetarian—maybe even will be sharing a Thanksgiving meal with one. If so, you may have heard of Tofurky, the vegetarian alternative to a traditional turkey roast? If you’ve been the one charged with picking one of these up from the store, you may have noticed that it’s fairly pricey, especially considering its size.

Well, enter TURNIP-key, or what I prefer to call “turnip steaks.” These are a discovery I made in the kitchen Saturday afternoon, as I was slicing up some regulation-softball-sized Japanese turnips (otherwise known as salad turnips) as crudite to go with a spinach-arugula-caramelized onion dip I was making for a Friendsgiving feast that evening. I cut an inch-thick round slice of the turnip, about to pare it into smaller pieces, and thought, “Ooh, I’ll roast this in the oven whole, and it’ll make a great meatless entree for our vegan friend.”

As a former vegan, and one who is still pretty strict about the animal products I consume, I have a lot of sympathy for vegans at Thanksgiving time. I remember it being my least favorite holiday for many years, as the feast simply became a reminder to me of the SAD (Standard American Diet), and all its misgivings: meat-centered, simple carbohydrate-overloaded, salt-laden, raw vegetable-lacking, topped with sweetened heavy whipped cream! (And that’s not even mentioning the selective-memory history lesson/myth we’ve been taught led to “the first Thanksgiving.”) Beyond the bird, just about every side dish, when cooked its conventional way, is off limits to vegans: mashed potatoes (butter, milk), candied sweet potatoes (marshmallows, butter), green bean casserole (cream), pumpkin pie (eggs), stuffing (turkey drippings). So vegans can eat.. cranberry sauce! (Unless it’s prepared with white sugar, in which case hard core vegans will even eschew this.) Not much of a feast for vegans, I’m afraid, despite there being ample availability and variety of vegetables, grains, and fruits this time of year!

So may I suggest a new dish to add to your annual Thanksgiving feast? Turnip steaks! In addition to delighting every vegetarian at your table, some day you may even decide to forego the whole “turkey” in favor of something much less tasking, and certainly much friendlier on your wallet. (Although if you’re really into roasting a whole turkey, it’s well worth spending more on a bird that you know was raised in a healthy and humane way, and by a local farm!)

Let me tell you more about this incredible vegetable that led to this inspiration, and explain why this is going to be tastier than you might think, especially if you’ve only had “regular” (purple top) turnips. The varieties of Japanese turnips we grow at EarthDance are called “Hakurei” or “Tokyo Cross”. These varieties are so tender and mild, they’re often eaten raw and hence are often called “salad turnips.” They are often harvested at about golf ball size, and can quickly grow to baseball size. I was pretty amused on Friday to see them in the cooler at softball size, and can vouch for the fact that the taste is not affected at all by their larger size.

I will never forget when, last summer, we did an on-farm cooking demonstration featuring these turnips with the teens in our summer jobs program. To keep it simple and quick, Rachel cut up salad turnips, coated them with a bit of oil and sprinkled them with salt, and roasted them in the oven. India took one bite, and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! If I had these every day, I would eat them instead of french fries!” Yup. French fries.

So on Saturday when I told the vegan friend that I had a turnip steak for him, I thought while not sounding great at first, he too might be converted. Not only was he grateful for the vegan entree, he facebook-messaged me afterwards thanking me again, saying he ate the whole thing, and that it was “seriously delicious.”

I decided to cook one (okay, two) for myself tonight to test out the idea one more time before sharing it. I had intentions of getting all fancy with it: sauteing some shallots to top it with, or making a balsamic glaze, or even drizzling steak sauce over the top… but in the end I just cut two big turnip slices, put some oil in the bottom of the cast iron skillet that I’d used to caramelize onions in yesterday (aka, no need to clean), shook a little salt on top, and put them in the oven on 400 degrees F to roast. Apologies to all of you recipe-followers out there, but I totally forgot to time it. My nose told me when they were done. (20 minutes maybe?) They should be juicy and tender. I seared mine a bit too, for added “steak” effect. [See photos.]

At $3.00/bunch, you’re talking about 43 cents/steak, so you can add this to your budget gourmet recipe collection! And if you’re cooking for a vegan, vegetarian, or just plant-based food lover this Thanksgiving Holiday season, be sure you add this quick and easy entree to your line-up.

They’re everything you want in a steak: tender, juicy, flavorful!