Parsnip

Parsnip Biscuits with Black Pepper and Honey

March 20, 2014

Each Thursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast -- because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: Leftover parsnip purée gets biscuited.

Parsnip biscuits from Food52

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Our little guy is now six months old, which is apparently the age when you can start gently introducing solid foods to a baby’s diet. Espen (that’s our son’s name. It’s Norwegian. Surprise.) has been enthusiastically trying to steal our food from our hands and plates (not to mention attempting to drink from our coffee cups and beer glasses) since he was four months old, so we figured starting him on purées was going to be a piece of cake.  

Turns out, enthusiasm does not equate directly to consumption. He will stuff a spoonful of purée in his mouth like he hasn’t eaten in weeks, but then he has trouble figuring out what to do next. He spits half of it out, chokes on another portion of it, and finally manages to swallow a small amount. After polishing off maybe one to two teaspoons worth of food, he decides that’s enough and goes back to trying to steal our coffee. I’ve been told this is totally normal (well, not the coffee part), so that’s fine. But, I do keep winding up with a lot of extra purée.  

These biscuits were born of a cupful of parsnip purée that wasn’t getting eaten. I noticed a recipe for black pepper parsnip biscuits in the copy of Smoke and Pickles I just bought myself, and thought that maybe they’d be a good use of my purée. When I looked at the recipe, however, I discovered that Edward Lee has you do all sorts of fancy caramelizing to your parsnips before you purée them, which I’m sure is delicious, but didn’t suit my purpose at all. So, I decided simply to use a sweet potato biscuit recipe and pull a little parsnip switcheroo. It worked wonderfully. The earthy sweetness of the parsnips comes through while the freshly ground black pepper gives a pep talk to the butter’s richness. They’re fantastic with bacon or with eggs or just smeared with some more honey and butter. Now, I wonder what I can do with leftover broccoli purée...

Parsnip biscuits from Food52

Parsnip Biscuits with Black Pepper and Honey 

Makes about 10 to 12 biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
5 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup puréed parsnips (just simmer small chunks of parsnip until quite tender, then purée)
5 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup cold buttermilk, plus more as needed

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photos by Emily Vikre

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    Alice Gardner
I like to say I'm a lazy iron chef (I just cook with what I have around), renegade nutritionist, food policy wonk, and inveterate butter and cream enthusiast! My husband and I own a craft distillery in Northern Minnesota called Vikre Distillery (www.vikredistillery.com), where I claimed the title, "arbiter of taste." I also have a doctorate in food policy, for which I studied the changes in diet and health of new immigrants after they come to the United States. I myself am a Norwegian-American dual citizen. So I have a lot of Scandinavian pride, which especially shines through in my cooking on special holidays. Beyond loving all facets of food, I'm a Renaissance woman (translation: bad at focusing), dabbling in a variety of artistic and scientific endeavors.

7 Comments

Midge March 20, 2014
How funny that I was just wondering what to do with parsnips leftover from St. Patrick's Day. Hello biscuits for breakfast tomorrow!
 
fiveandspice March 21, 2014
Yay!
 
savorthis March 20, 2014
Those sound great! I think a caramelized carrot butter would be amazing on those. With a smoked meat of sorts.

I would (and still do) get so excited when my daughter likes something and then I make a ton and she will have nothing to do with it. So yes- that is all normal. Frustratingly normal. Even better was when she was eating more solid food (that I had lovingly cooked ALL DAY) and she would lean over and slowly and deliberately spit it out onto MY plate.

We stir purees into eggs a lot- broccoli would be good and so is spinach and asparagus. Or turn them into soups, swirl them into bread dough, mac 'n' cheese...or polenta as Abbie suggested. Or freeze it into cubes and add it to leftover grains here and there to sneak in more veggies.
 
fiveandspice March 21, 2014
Hahahaha, oh dear. Children. Also, a caramelized carrot butter with these would be absolutely amazing, I think.
 
aargersi March 20, 2014
Yum. Broccoli puree risotto? Polenta? Broccoli creamy stuff on bow ties? In a smoothie? Ew, no, don't do that
 
Alice G. March 20, 2014
Ooh! Broccoli pesto, maybe? I like mine with walnuts.
 
fiveandspice March 21, 2014
Good ideas! Definitely using these!