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Kohlrabi: The Mysterious Vegetable in the Cabbage Family

Kohlrabi looks like no other vegetable. A leafy aboveground bulb, it resembles a flying saucer more than either the cabbage or turnip from which it developed. It goes by many names, including cabbage turnip and stem cabbage. The bulb can be pale green, in which case it is called white kohlrabi, or purplish, in which case it is called violet kohlrabi. Either way, the skin is peeled away, revealing a white bulb that is close to a turnip in flavor, but sweeter and more delicately flavored. It can be eaten raw or cooked. Choose or harvest small ones, ideally about the size of tennis balls, and peel before using. Figure that each bulb will yield about 1 cup when cut into 1-inch cubes.

You can substitute kohlrabi for turnips in most recipes. The leaves can be cooked and enjoyed like turnip greens.

Vermont Roots: Gilfeather Turnips

In the late 1800s, the Gilfeather turnip was either developed or discovered by John Gilfeather (1865–1944) of Wardsboro, Vermont. A secretive, crusty old bachelor, he cut off the tops and bottoms of the plants before taking them to market so no one could reproduce them. Turnips—and rutabagas—are biennials. If you buy a turnip with the roots and tops intact and store it properly in a root cellar, the vegetable likely will survive the winter dormancy; replant it in the spring and it will quickly produce seeds, enough to allow you to produce a new crop. John Gilfeather had no intention of letting this happen.

Fortunately, after John Gilfeather died, a number of Wardsboro residents acquired the seed somehow and continued to plant the turnip. Seeds passed from friend to friend. Eventually, the name was trademarked, and the vegetable was registered as an heirloom variety with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. Today the seeds are available through the Fedco Seed Company in Waterville, Maine.

To taste the Gilfeather turnip is to become a fan. It has none of the bitter cabbagey flavor a turnip will develop in storage. Harvests of 3- and 4-pound roots with perfect texture and flavor are not unusual. The Gilfeather turnip’s mild-tasting flesh is terrific in chicken pot pie or paired with potatoes in a mash-up. It is absolutely delicious roasted, especially with chicken or duck, and bathed in drippings. Surprisingly, it is also terrific raw, with a pleasingly crisp texture and mild flavor. And the greens are arguably the best-tasting turnip greens ever, mild and sweet compared to the usual turnip greens.

An heirloom vegetable, the Gilfeather turnip is included in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, an international catalog of great-tasting foods that are threatened by industrial standardization, the regulations of large-scale distribution, or environmental damage. The Gilfeather is the only turnip to have made it to the Ark of Taste, and it is a great-tasting vegetable.

The Gilfeather is unique among turnips. Although it is white-fleshed and white-skinned, its mild, sweet flavor closely resembles that of a rutabaga. Furthermore, its shape is like that of a rutabaga, with a wide taproot tapering from the bottom of the bulb, rather than one that emerges off the rounded bottom. As the Fedco Seed folks write in their catalog description, “This heirloom has come down in folklore as a turnip but is really a rutabaga, big-knobbed and bulky.”

I love the idea that the most celebrated turnip in America may well be a Vermont rutabaga in disguise.

Turnips

The turnip goes far back in history, dating back to the prehistoric development of agriculture. Its culture spread widely, from the Mediterranean across Asia to the Pacific, probably because it is so easy to grow and so easy to store. The turnip was brought to the Americas by Jacques Cartier, who planted it in Canada in 1541. It was also planted in Virginia by the colonists in 1609 and in Massachusetts in the 1620s; Native Americans adopted it from the colonists. Since colonial times, the turnip has been one of the most