Ah, the humble rutabaga: a stocky, turnip-like root vegetable with which many people may be unfamiliar. Maybe you’ve had it in a hearty stew, cooked down to something resembling a potato, but it is stellar as a veggie noodle!
We ❤️ wild-caught salmon. We buy fillets and bake them, then make several different dishes from it. One such dish is this noodle/voodle bowl: it showcases the salmon atop a bed of crisp rutabaga noodles and stretchy, vermicelli-like shirataki noodles.
Shirataki noodles can be used to make traditional pasta dishes like spaghetti (though the sauce slides off), but I think they really shine in Asian cuisine, like Vietnamese bún-inspired noodle bowls, and are a very convincing (and low carb) substitute for vermicelli.
The rutabaga may be unassuming in appearance, but it makes a wonderful spiralized noodle: crisp and slightly sweet. It married very well with the other flavors and added a welcome crunchy texture. A sprinkle of chopped peanuts and minced mint (from my tiny windowsill plant) added more complementary flavors.
The spiralizer made short work of the very hard rutabaga, but I realized that spiralizing the root from its side would have worked better than from the top – the vegetable is comprised of concentric rings (like an onion), and proved problematic because the rings kept slipping out of the “teeth” in the veggie holder. Turning it on its side resolved the issue.
Sadly, I only realized after the fact that I also had fresh lettuce that could have been chopped and added to the noodle bowl (like in bún). Oh, well – there will be another bowl in the very near future!
So, the next time you see a “weird” root vegetable like kohlrabi, rutabaga, turnip, daikon, celeriac, jicama, or parsnip at your local farmer’s market or grocery store, buy it and spiralize it. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how tasty these underrated veggies are!
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