Recipe: Rutabaga Fries

Last week I spotted local rutabagas on sale for $0.28/lb and brought home three little ones. What the heck is a rutabaga? Apparently (as per Wikipedia) it's a cross between a cabbage and a turnip. A fun and seasonally relevant fact: in the UK, rutabagas were long carved in place of pumpkins for jack-o'-lanterns!

cabbage + turnip = rutabaga

I decided to make rutabaga fries with my first rutabaga. These were super simple to prepare and came out tastier than I'd expected! I used:

• 1 small rutabaga
• olive oil
• black pepper
• salt

I started by peeling the rutabaga and slicing it into sticks around 1 cm wide.

I tossed the rutabaga sticks in a bit of olive oil, sprinkled them with black pepper and salt, and laid them out on two baking trays.

simple seasoning: olive oil, black pepper, & salt

I baked them at 375 degrees F for around 40 minutes, flipping each piece halfway through.

flipping each fry

I would suggest checking on them frequently to ensure that they don't burn (a few of mine came close!).

all done!

One small rutabaga made two meals of fries for me, which I had on the side of a potato/egg scramble.

I'll caution you that rutabaga does taste quite strong, sharing the sulphur taste of its cabbage relatives. I can see how some people might not be fans of it, but I enjoyed it and am looking forward to trying other recipes!

Have you tried rutabaga? How did you prepare it?