How to Make Turnip Kraut

By Kelly Farrens
Published on July 1, 1983
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PHOTO: FOTOLIA/NATALIKAEVSTI
Turning your turnips into kraut is simple and provides unique flavor.

Turnips are a boon to the self-reliant gardener. The leaves are vitamin-packed and delicious, and the mineral-rich roots can easily be stored over the winter in a cool basement or root cellar. (Just cut the tops off to within half an inch of the roots and sink the turnips into boxes filled with either moist sand or sawdust.)

Sad to say, though, Brassica rapa does have an “image problem”: Few root crops are as devoid of glamour as the lowly turnip. While its garden mate the potato can end up in such high-class dishes as vichyssoise, and carrots even make it into cake . . . the turnip is usually served boiled or maybe — on special occasions — mashed. Recently, however, O.W. “Ott” Bogner of Crofton, Nebraska, a man who knows a lot about food preparation (he owned a steakhouse and lounge for 37 years), taught me a whole new way to process this vegetable . . . making turnip kraut.

How to Make Kraut, Turnip Style

“A Kentucky friend gave me this recipe a number of years ago,” Ott says, “and I’ve been enjoying it ever since. In fact, that same friend constructed a dandy turnip shredder for me — one that gives me spaghetti-like strips — but you can use any kitchen tool with a shredding blade to prepare the roots.”

First, Ott peels the turnips with an ordinary paring knife. Then he centers each root on his shredder and turns the handle … and the blades cut the vegetable into long, continuous strings that spiral down into a clean washtub. Bogner puts these strips into quart canning jars.

“I prefer the wide-mouth type,” he told me, “because they’re easier to fill.”

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