Waffled Carrot and Turnip Fritters

Shredded carrots and turnips, combined with a bit of spring onion, make an earthy and sweetly savory side dish or appetizer. Topped with some parmesan cheese and butter, it's a tasty way to enjoy the farm share. Use a waffle iron to make this fun snack.

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I find the start of each Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share season to be rife with promise. We'll have high expectations to eat ALL THE THINGS and then get bogged down in sheer volume of vegetables.


What helps me the most is to have a few 'go to' methods to deal with different types of produce. For example, when I'm overwhelmed with greens I know I can whip up a Fast Greens & Pasta dish to use up a large bunch in a way my family will enjoy.


I shared last week how I turn to my grill, in the summer, or to my roasting pan (in the Fall when I'm not worried about heating up my house too much) to turn root vegetables into building blocks for future meals.

Today I'd like to share another method--fritters.  I like to fritter away my time in the kitchen. It's much more productive than frittering away my time on Facebook, and the results are far tastier. I've shared several recipes for shredding vegetables to make vegetable pancakes or fritters. One summer standby (that you can make off season if you shred and freeze your summer squash) is my Zucchini Pancake recipe. I've shared a previous plain Turnip Fritter recipe here. I've even waffled up some St Patrick's Day leftovers in my Corned Beef Hash Brown Waffles.

Note! Normally I try to write my recipes so that someone with very little kitchen experience could follow them and be successful, but today I'm not going to do that.  I cannot find my notes on this recipe, so I'm going to write off the cuff to my fellow Curious Kitchen Enthusiasts. Use these ingredients as a starting point to make your dish your own way. I hope I'm giving you an idea for how to use something from your farm share, and I hope you'll run with it and enjoy the results.

For more recipes using carrots, please see my Carrot Recipes Collection. For more recipes using turnips, please see my Turnip Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

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Waffled Carrot and Turnip Fritters

Ingredients

• carrots, finely shredded
• turnips, finely shredded
• spring onions, just the white parts, finely diced (at least ¼ cup)
• eggs (at least 1 egg for every 3 cups shredded vegetables)
• vegetable oil or cooking fat of your choice
• salt (at least ¼ teaspoon per cup of shredded vegetables, I use kosher)
• pepper (at least ¼ teaspoon per cup of shredded vegetables)
• unbleached all purpose flour (½ cup for every 3 cups shredded vegetables)
• baking powder (1 teaspoon per every 3 cups shredded vegetables)
• optional to serve--butter or buttery spread, parmesan cheese, sriracha sauce, what else?

Instructions

1. Shred the carrots and turnips, and measure how many cups you've got as you dump them into a large bowl.
2. For every 3 cups of vegetables, add an egg and a teaspoon or two of oil to the bowl.
3. Add salt and pepper to the bowl, and stir mixture with a fork.
4. Sprinkle flour and baking powder over top, and stir well.
5. Preheat waffle iron over medium heat and spray with oil spray. Place a scoop (I used about ⅓ cup) of batter into each section. 
6. Close the lid and cook until done. I'm sorry that's imprecise--that's where my notes would have come in handy! When my waffle iron beeped I checked it, and gave mine a little more time, and bumped up the heat setting for the next round.
7. Spread hot fritters with a bit of butter or buttery spread and top with cheese. If you like, go for some spice with sriracha sauce.