A rutabaga, sometimes called a Swedish turnip (or a Swede to the Brits), is a root vegetable that looks like a pale yellow turnip and belongs to the cabbage family. Cook a rutabaga as you would any other turnip. The rutabaga also has edible leaves.
If you are a German old enough to remember World War I, you may have had enough rutabaga to last you a lifetime. This heroic root vegetable kept many from starving in the so-called Rutabaga Winter of 1916-17, and will forever be considered a "famine food" by those who lived through it.
What is the difference between a yam and a sweet potato?
What is the difference between a yam and a sweet potato?
Although the terms sweet potato and yam are often used interchangeably, the two vegetables are not technically related. Yams, which are native to Africa and Asia, are related to lillies and grasses. Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, are in the morning glory family.
If you look closely, you can tell them apart. Sweet potatoes are typically more uniformly shaped and have tapered ends. Yams have rough scaly brown or black skin and off-white, purple or red flesh. Sweet potatoes typically have yellow, red, purple or brown skin and yellow, orange or orange-red flesh.
In terns of flavor, yams tend to be sweeter and moister. Sweet potatoes differ in flavor depending on the variety -- paler, thinner-skinned sweet potatoes have lower sugar content and are dry and crumbly in texture, similar to a white baked potato. The more common, darker-skinned sweet potatoes have vivid orange flesh and are sweeter in taste and more moist in their texture -- these are the sweet potatoes often mistakenly called yams.
Despite their differences, commonly available varieties of both sweet potatoes and yams are fairly similar in taste and texture, you can generally use them interchangeably in recipes.
Chopping is probably the most common way to prep an onion. Chopped onions show up in anything that needs the basic, earthy pungent flavor that onions give. Chop them larger for longer-cooking dishes like stews and rustic soups, and smaller (call it a dice if you like) for anything from salsas to sauces to ragouts.
To start, cut the onion in half through the root. The root itself will help keep the onion together for chopping
Rotate the onion 90 degrees and cut off the papery end (not the root end). This will make the skin easy to peel away and discard.
Peel back the onion's papery skin. It's often easiest to peel away the first layer of the onion along with the skin.
Make a series of diagonal cuts (roughly 45 degrees) into the side of the onion. Keep more space between the slices for a large chop. Make the cuts closer together for a small chop or a dice.
Now make a series of horizontal cuts to finish shaping the chop or dice.
Finally, rotate the onion again and slice crosswise against the checkerboard pattern you made in the onion. The chopped pieces will fall away from the onion.
