How awesome is this recipe! Here is the oven baked baked yellow turnip recipe from my lovely mom! And boy, I don’t have to tell you how this side dish brings back a bunch of sweet childhood memories…
This oven baked turnip recipe is an all time family favorite!
It is kind of strange how flavors and smells have the power to just pick you up and project you right back into the past years ago!
Every single time I bake this turnip au gratin in the oven, a very familiar and mouth watering aroma fills the entire kitchen.
Childhood Memories
And it just gives me goosebumps even writing this down!
My mom used to be a stay at home mom.
Which means that she was always in charge of cooking. And she made loads of dishes I love. But I have to admit that this turnip recipe is in my top 3 of most favorite childhood treats. That sweet baked turnip smell is epic.
I still can’t get enough of it when I am baking this treat and that sweet smell fills the entire kitchen.
Best Oven Baked Turnip Recipe with Cheese
But hang on a minute!
You need fresh yellow (golden) turnips for this recipe. However unfortunately it turns out that my supermarket only sells the fresh white ones. And quite frankly I don’t like to us those for my oven baked turnip recipe right here because the white ones are not as sweet as the yellow turnips.
Believe me, I tried it before but I was quite disappointed in the end.
Up until the day that I stumbled upon bunches of fresh yellow turnips at the local Saturday farmers market for the very first time.
Well that was about time!
I grabbed them right away, I just had to have them.
Yellow Turnips vs. White Turnips
Like I said before, I once made this turnip recipe with fresh white turnips but something was definitely missing. Yellow turnips are much sweeter, which makes this dish so appetizing.
I am not saying that the white turnip recipe version was not good.
It still made a yummy vegetable side dish, but just not what I was looking for.
I would say, just try it out and see for yourself!
Do you love turnips?
Then you should also check out another one of my turnip recipes: my hutsepot or Flemish hotchpot! And how about my posh looking cod fish navarin with winter vegetables!
Enjoy my mom’s oven baked turnip recipe!
Best Oven Baked Turnip Recipe with Cheese
Here's my mom's turnip recipe then: grated yellow turnips and cheese baked in the oven! Brings back some sweet childhood memories...
- 1 ⅔ lbs yellow turnips (700 g)
- 3,5 oz parmesan cheese (100 g), grated
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter soft
- pepper
- salt
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Rinse the yellow turnips and let them drain for a few minutes in a sieve. Cut off the green stems and then peel the turnips. Grate the turnips finely.
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Put the soft butter on a large oven tray and rub it all over using your fingers (or a piece of kitchen paper if you like).
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Then transfer the grated turnips to the tray. Try to spread the turnips evenly so that they can cook evenly as well. Season them with a little pepper and salt.
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Sprinkle the grated turnips with the grated cheese. Then season one last time with a pinch of pepper and salt.
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Bake the grated turnips in a preheated oven at 392°F (200°C) for 30 to 35 minutes until the cheese has melted and the sides of the turnip au gratin start to brown. Then turn the oven off but leave the turnips inside for another 20 minutes to rest. Remove the turnip gratin from the oven. Cut it up and serve.
Fresh Turnip Recipes
So what else can we cook with fresh turnips?
Do you know other turnip recipes?
The first thing that I can think of is an Asian turnip cake recipe, lo bak go in Cantonese. But did you know that turnip cake doesn’t actually contain turnips but daikon? Which is technically a radish.
If I keep brainstorming about fresh turnip recipes soup is another idea that pops up into my mind immediately. A lovely creamy soup if you ask me. Preferably with bacon!
Hey, you can also add those turnip greens to your recipe for turnip soup.
Which brings me to this…
Recipe for Turnip Greens
Zero waste!
That is how things go in my kitchen.
Nine out of ten the fresh yellow turnips that I find in my local supermarket are already cleaned. However often at the Saturday farmers market the turnip greens have not been removed.
And I don’t mind.
But what could you possibly do with those, I can hear you ask?
Apart from adding them to a turnip soup.
I have to admit that I don’t really have a turnip greens recipe for them here on my website. But I can show you a similar preparation to give you an idea.
Flavor
But let’s be honest here, those fresh turnip greens are not packed with a tremendous amount of flavor. Which in itself does not automatically mean that they are not tasty, nutritious or just uninteresting to cook with.
So what can you do with them?
Make a recipe for turnip green soup, I said that before.
But I also think of a stir fry for instance.
Use those fresh turnip greens as a vegetable instead of adding boy choy or spinach to your wok. I think that with the right amount of oyster or soy sauce, these turnip green will be a delicious addition!
Another dish that I can see turnip greens in are curries.
Curry
Preferably coconut based curries, with lots of other vegetables.
Do take a look at my Thai vegetable curry, those fresh turnip greens would be perfect in it!
And that brings me to a dish that once tasted in Penang, Malaysia.
We were enjoying lunch at a Nyonya restaurant, specialised in authentic local cuisine. And there we tasted a heavenly lush sweet potato curry with sweet potato leaves in it. I can still taste it!
The creamy coconut milk based thick sauce, the tender and starchy chunks of sweet potato. And then those rather crunchy bright green stalks of chopped up sweet potato greens.
Absolutely to die for.
Zero Waste
That was an amazing curry.
And it was there for the very first time that I realised that I had never really thought of cooking with vegetable greens. By simply adding them to the same dish instead of just throwing them in the bin.
So the next time that I bought fresh radishes, I kept the radish greens aside.
And I turned them into a lovely pesto. Which I served as a little sauce for lunch, an extra topping for a classic Belgian open faced sandwich…
A quark cheese and sliced raw radish sandwich!
Fresh Radishes
What a delicious lunch bite, especially in the summer.
I even used the leftover radish leaf pesto as a salad dressing…
So what about you?
Do you have a couple of zero waste recipes up you sleeve?
Perhaps you can think of yet another turnip greens recipe? Or turnip recipes?
If you do, please leave a comment below!
In the meantime, try my mom’s cheesy oven baked turnip recipe!
And enjoy…