Demystifying Root Vegetables

hi i'm louisa shafia on ehow.com today we're going to talk about root vegetables root vegetables are what's around basically from november through april in much of the country they're what we have to cook with but they're really fun they're really diverse and they're really good for you so i have some cool ones here today that i want to show you i have some yellow beets these are really beautiful when you cut them open they're they're very common now you can find them easily they cook just the way you would cook a red beet but look at this gorgeous color and that really stays with them as they cook so i love that i also have some red beets that i'm going to show you how to roast in a second i have these guys which look really scary but they are actually not intimidating at all these are celery roots and once you get rid of all this ugly exterior there's a wonderful white vegetable under here that basically tastes just like celery i'm gonna show you my favorite method for roasting beets and all i'm gonna do is i'm gonna take my whole beets all i did was chop off the leaves and any stems and just poke some holes in it with a fork a few holes here and there and then i just put my whole beets in a roasting pan with a splash of water cover them tightly and let them roast for about an hour until they're fork tender and then you just peel off the skin with your hands really simple i also have some turnips here and these are really interesting these can actually be eaten raw and you can just peel them and get rid of this skin and the taste that you'll find inside is kind of gingery kind of spicy it's a lot like a radish these are really wonderful and here's one that i cut open earlier this is what they look like inside they're so good i like to use them in salads i also like to roast them so for roasting i just dice this up you can do big chunky dice and you can do a mix i'm gonna add some potatoes because these take about the same amount of time to cook as a potato okay i just toss these together add a little bit of olive oil some salt and roast these up just the way that you would if you're making roasted potatoes and they're so good okay the last thing that i want to show you is celery root and these are really scary looking i mean come on if you saw this at the farmers market you would probably run past it because it looks like some kind of monster however if you cut off this outer skin inside is this beautiful white vegetable and you can roast this just like you would any other root vegetable you could also eat it raw and it basically tastes just like green celery now if you're going to roast these i would mix them with a different root vegetable because they're a little bit bitter that's it really simple to use so i hope this gives you a good idea about starting to cook with root vegetables they're really easy to use really delicious and really good for you i'm lisa shafia i'll see you next time on ehow.com you

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