I would have to go with turnips. Incredibly versatile and nutritious root, plus delicious greens to fry up
People say they hate cabbage all the time, but cabbage is really great. You can make slaw with it, you can ferment it into sauerkraut or kimchi, you can steam it for a side or to put in a sandwich, you can add it to any kind of filling or stuffing, or you can roll other stuff inside it, you can boil it in a soup, it gives a great flavor to vegetable broth, it’s really nutritious and it keeps for much longer than other leafy greens.
Seems weird to me to hate cabbage, but I suppose there is a certain association with certain very bland cooking? Idk.
I garnered a very low opinion of pretty much all vegetables during childhood that persisted well into adulthood, because I grew up in a household that only ever prepared them one of two ways: raw, or boiled.
Doesn’t matter what it was. Carrots, peas, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, green beans… the two exceptions being onions (which may have been fried on occasion) or potatoes (which culinarily aren’t in the same category). If it was boiled, there’d be a half-assed attempt to make it taste like something again by melting a knob of butter on it and salting it. That’s it.
When that’s the extent of your culinary range, cabbage has no reason to enter the house, so for us it never did. We just assumed it would be shit if you prepared it that way. And we were probably right. Boiled cabbage is what the poor Bucket family was said to have eaten every day in Willy Wonka. Doesn’t paint a glamorous picture.
I’m only just now coming around to the concept of vegetables tasting good when you, like, y’know, actually cook them well. Haven’t given cabbage a fair shake yet, though.
I used to hate cabbage because my father boiled the crap out of it with corned beef every St. Patrick’s Day. Disgusting.
Then I discovered stir fry, okonomiyaki, kimchi. Now it’s a favorite.
Cabbage boiled with corn beef sounds legit amazing. Is that an Irish thing?
Cut it stripes, some salt, fry in a pan and you can throw it over a lot of dishes.
Botanical fun fact: cabbage is just a variant of Brassica oleracea, which includes like every tasty vegetable on the planet: cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, kohlrabi, kale, collards, all kinds of cabbage shapes, colours and sizes, and more.
I quite like Brussels sprouts.
Since the late 90’s Brussel Sprouts no longer taste bitter/bad. Some Dutch food scientists were able to isolate the bitter tasting chemical, find older variations of Brussel sprouts that had less of it, cross pollinate it with higher yield variations, and remove the bad taste.
That version is pretty much the only one you’ll find to buy anywhere.
So basically it’s everyone who had Brussels Sprouts pre 1999 who really universally hated them. The youngins never knew they used to taste like shit, and the old timers haven’t tried them in over 25 years because they don’t know they no longer taste like shit.
Brussel sprouts. Lots of people hate them because they got them overcooked as children but they are so pretty and so delicious if prepared properly.
Fun fact: Brussel sprouts taste better now because the bitterness was intentionally selectively bred out of them in the '90s. They were, apparently, only bitter for a period of time because the ones that were easiest to mechanically harvest were bitter. Pre-mechanical harvesting, less bitter varieties were more popular.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/do-brussels-sprouts-taste-better-now-yes-here-s-why-01ghed9q8dr8
Oh man cauliflower. I used to think cauliflower was broccoli’s ugly sister but no way. Cauliflower is cheap, easy to grow, nutritious, and versatile.
Germany, I’m guessing? I’m jealous, here it’s one of the most expensive vegetables.
