Kohlrabi

Last year’s CSA boxes introduced me to a few vegetables I’d never tried before.  No surprise there, really, since I’m a little late to the vegetable eating party.  (I spent many years with green beans and lettuce being about the only vegetables I would eat.) 

One of my new experiences was with kohlrabi.  I had never seen or heard of kohlrabi before it showed up in our first CSA box.  I thought it looked more like something out of a sci-fi movie than something off of a farm.  Fortunately, the farm has pictures of the more unusual veggies to help folks like me figure out what in the world we have. 

Once I learned that I was in fact in possession of kohlrabi, and not something left behind by a UFO, I turned to Google.  I learned that kohlrabi is basically in the cabbage family, that it comes in a few different colors (isn’t the purple pretty?), that the leaves are edible and can be treated basically like any other green, and that you’re really only limited by your imagination and culinary preferences when it comes to preparing and serving kohlrabi. 

Garlic and olive oil are my main go-to things in the kitchen.  If in doubt, I tend to sauté it in garlic and olive oil, and maybe add a little Italian seasoning.  I love garlic and olive oil, and most of the time it’s a good fallback plan.   I decided that garlic and olive oil would be my plan for the kohlrabi.

It had a texture very similar to potatoes (or apples) but smelled a lot like cabbage.  Cabbage isn’t my favorite thing, so I decided on a lot of garlic at that point.  Because the texture reminded me of potatoes I decide to go with a sort of home fry approach.  I just fried pieces of it in the olive oil with lots and lots of garlic, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. 

It turned out alright.   It had a little more of a cabbage flavor than I liked, but it was alright. Nick liked it a little better than I did.  We basically agreed that it’s something we can eat when it comes in the CSA box, but not something we’d choose to buy on its own.

We also tried tossing some chopped kohlrabi into vegetable soup.  I didn’t care for it.  I thought it gave the whole soup too strong of a cabbage flavor.  Nick thought it was okay. After that we pretty much stuck to the original home fry way of preparing the kohlrabi.

The greens were no problem.  We seemed to have some sort of greens in pretty much every box, so we just cooked a big pot of whatever greens we had on hand almost every week, or sautéed them and served them in quiche. 

So what about you?  Have you tried kohlrabi?  Do you like it?  What’s your favorite way to prepare it?  Do you think it looks a little sci-fi?