Fresh Turnip Green Soup Recipe

What are turnip greens?

Turnip greens are the leaves of the turnip root, which are edible as well. The greens are at times sold separately.

Often while the greens are simply thrown out and not used in the kitchen because it is not common knowledge that the greens are edible and healthy as well.

Preparing

If you have whole turnips with roots and greens, simply cut off the leaves from the roots. The roots can be used in myriad other ways in your food. I like to make a fresh turnip salad or cook mashed turnips, but you can bake a turnip puff too.

For the green tops, simply rinse the vegetable and cut them small. You can use the leaves directly in your food, just cut them small OR place them into a bag and store in the fridge or even in the freezer.

Stored in the fridge, turnip greens can be kept for about 2 weeks.

Cooking the greens

Turnip tops are great raw in salads when they are young and still tender, as they are a bit sweet. Larger turnip greens make a great turnip green soup recipe, such as today's turnip greens with sausage soup.

Or you can sauté your turnip greens in a pan, grill them, or add them to a casserole dish the way you would do spinach, chard, or collard greens. The greens are very versatile, so you can get creative using up your healthy turnip greens.

Process Overview

For this soup, keep your fresh or frozen turnip greens ready, as well as the other fresh ingredients such as onion, garlic, and carrot.

Step 1

Cook your onions soft with the garlic in a soup pot. Add the sliced carrot and sausage pieces as well and sauté everything.

Step 2

Throw in your turnip greens and sauté until the leaves have reduced in size for about 2 minutes on high heat.

Pour stock/broth into the pot and season with salt, black pepper, nutmeg, and bay leaves.

Step 3

Bring to a boil and cook the soup for about 25 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked and the soup has got some flavor.

Pick out bay leaves and discard them before serving your soup hot.

Variations

You can add or switch out the following ingredients to make this turnip greens soup your own:

• use smoked sausages or chicken pieces
• add other greens too, such as mustard greens, collard, chard, cabbage, or spinach
• make this soup with black-eyed peas
• use beef or chicken broth instead of vegetable broth
• add other soup spices and herbs such as juniper berries and lovage to add flavor.

If you want to add dumplings, you can choose to add any of the following:

• passatelli - Italian lemon bread crumb noodle-like "dumplings"
• herb schöberl - biscuit pastry and herbs are baked and cut into diamond shapes
• bread dumplings - leftover bread turned into round ball dumplings