I am always on the lookout for new vegetables. Although we all have a go-to list of veggies for side dishes (hello cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and sugar snap peas!), it’s fun to explore and find something new to mix things up. Recently on a farmer’s market trip, I found some lovely sunchokes, aka Jerusalem artichokes, that I couldn’t wait to try.
What is a sunchoke you ask? Let’s talk about that. Looks? They look just like ginger root and are small root veggies. They are can be be cream colored, brown , or even a bit red on the outside and are normally a creamy white on the inside. Origins? They come from a plant in the sunflower family, not the artichoke family. Taste? They taste like a root vegetable – sort of like a cross between a celery root and a potato in my opinion. They are earthy, a touch sweet, and really delicious. In terms of health and nutrition, they have high amounts of iron, potassium and thiamin. They are also low in calories and high in fiber making them work for low carb diets. There are lots of uses for sunchokes – soups, purees, shaved in salads or slaws, and roasted. Roasting them into delicate, delicious little sunchoke chips is my personal favorite.
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Optional: 1-2 tsp. of any seasoning or 2 tsp. fresh chopped herbs (Rosemary, thyme, grill seasoning, curry, Italian seasoning, and Chinese 5 Spice are all delicious).
In the recipe calculator this comes out to 3 PP but since it is considered a non-starchy vegetable by most experts, I would personally count this as 1 PP. I listed it at 2 PP since it is the average of the two ways most people would choose to track it.
