This year, I have joined a local community supported agriculture farm. I pay 20 dollars once per week, and every Tuesday, I get to come by and pick up my share of the vegetables that have been harvested. Later on this year, that will mean a wide variety of veggies, but we’re in the northeast, where the growing season is short, and so the pickings are a bit slim for now.
There are a lot of greens, and a lot of root vegetables. Turnips and radishes dominate.
I had hoped to use the roots to make chips – like potato chips, but with more flavor. So, I went online and found recipes for turnip and radish chips. The instructions for turnip chips at a site called Copper Moose Farm made it look very straight forward:
- Peel turnips
- Slice thinly
- Toss with a little olive oil, salt and pepper
- Bake in oven until crispy
- Eat ‘um up!
What could be easier? Well, a lot of things could be easier, as it turns out. I sliced. I tossed. I baked.
The turnip and radish chips (which required a bit of pre-steaming) did not turn crispy. They got hot, all right, and they shrunk down and twisted up a bit, but even after the better part of an hour, the chips were still wet and floppy.
Help. What did I do wrong? What else can I do with turnips and radishes?
