I absolutely Love Root Veggies. I always did! They are crunchy when you eat them raw, they are Sweet when you roasted. They are so versatile and can be eaten in so many different ways.
You can snack on them, add them to a salad, to a bowl, make purees, sauces, soups, the possibilities are endless.
And on top of that root vegetables are super-nutritious!! Win-Win situation! No excuse for me.
But I understand not everybody likes them or is willing to eat them.
I didn’t always like everything that I ate, but understanding how certain foods are good for me and the benefits I get from eating them has helped me be more open to try new ingredients and slowly incorporate them to my diet to the point that I look forward to eating them again and again.
I recently read an article on Root Veggies and the benefits that they offer and would like to share some thoughts with you.
Why are they good?
If you think about it: the plant took great effort to store all these nutrients in its root to help it survive a rough winter. When we eat the root, we’re benefiting from all that concentrated goodness.
Root vegetables in general are high in B vitamins and minerals such as potassium, manganese, and magnesium. They’re high in fiber and full of one of the healthiest forms of starch, the resistant kind that the helpful critters in our gut love so much.
Root vegetables are banned from certain diets, like keto and Paleo, because they have a higher starch and carbohydrate content than other vegetables. Fortunately, these are good carbs, completely unlike the processed carbohydrates from white flour and sugar that make up the bulk of starch consumption in the western diet. That said, the high carbohydrate percentage in certain root veggies can lead to rapid increases in blood sugar for some people. So you have to eat them with moderation or even avoid them if you have diabetes.
The health benefits you get from root vegetables depends largely on how you cook them. This is particularly clear when we look at potatoes. Consuming fried potatoes two or three times a week can double your risk of death. But baked, steamed, boiled, or air-fried potatoes eaten with other whole foods can reduce the risk of obesity and chronic disease.
Best Ways to Cook them
Baking converts some of the starch in root vegetables into sugars, making the calories more available, but also increasing the glycemic load. In the case of beets, a 2012 study of athletic performance found that baked beets enhanced the athletic performance of the study subjects
When you Boil them, they retained more nutrients than baking or microwaving. Keep the skins when boiling potatoes, as that’s where a lot of the nutrients are.
Steaming is a lot like boiling, with a couple of advantages. Because you need less water, you use less cooking energy. Steaming is also quicker, and since the potatoes are not immersed in water, it retains more water-soluble antioxidants.
Roasting is another method of applying heat to root vegetables that can mimic the crunch and flavor of deep-frying, but without the oil and high heat.
Stir-frying certain root vegetables has been shown to make some nutrients more available. For example, a 2012 study found that stir-fried carrots delivered 75% more retinol than raw ones. This makes sense, since retinol is fat-soluble, and therefore binds to the cooking oil used for the stir-fry.
Cooking root vegetables in a Slow Cooker is a great way to blend their flavors with other ingredients. Roots like celeriac (celery root), rutabaga, and parsnip are favorites in dishes like minestrone and other thick soups and stews.
Blanching is when you cook a vegetable for a short time in boiling water, then submerge that vegetable into cold or ice water immediately afterward to stop the cooking process. From a 2016 study based in Sri Lanka, we discovered that blanched yams retained 40% of the antioxidant.
And not all roots need to be cooked. Many can be eaten raw, including onion, garlic, jicama, ginger, carrots, and radishes. Others, like beets, can be eaten raw, though most people prefer them cooked. And yet others, like potatoes and taro, must be cooked before consuming to render toxic compounds harmless.
How to Use Root Vegetables
As I mentioned before, there are many ways to add root vegetables to your diet. In addition to roasting them for the holiday side dishes, you can also chop them into soups and stews; as well as bake, boil, and then mash or hash them.
Many roots are great as chips or fries, baked or air-fried without oil. You can add them to salads or bowls, either cooked or raw. Carrots, beets, and radishes are classic salad roots.
The starchy tubers make an excellent base or replacement for grains, especially if you want to avoid gluten and rice. And slicing them into stir-fries can add flavor, texture, and calories while making some of the fat-soluble nutrients more bioavailable.
I love to incorporate them on as many meals as possible and eat them all year round!
Based on the article “How to Cook & Use Root Vegetables” by The Food Revolution
(https://foodrevolution.org/blog/root-vegetables-recipes/?utm_source=ontraport&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=blo-2021&utm_content=root-vegetable-recipes-frn-members&utm_term=variant-1-of-2)
