Eating seasonally is a great way to get the healthiest vegetables at the best prices. But even if you don’t care about either of those, it’s still a good way to get a little variety.
I don’t think I could ever get bored with garden-fresh tomatoes. But after a couple of months of salads and crisp garden veggie sides, some savory roasted root vegetables make for a great change of pace. Besides, they work much better than salad with kielbasa and other smoked sausage.
Ingredients
3-5 pounds kielbasa or smoked sausage
1 beet
1 turnip
1 large carrot
2-4 stalks celery
3-6 cloves garlic (see note below)
1 leek
¼ head cabbage
bacon fat
salt & pepper
Directions
Prep
Pre-heat the oven to 350° F. while you’re prepping the veggies. Wash and scrub the root veggies and the celery, but don’t bother peeling them. You can peel them if you want but you’ll barely notice the difference in exchange for a bunch of slippery, messy work. (Especially the beets. Peeling raw beets is a nightmare.)
Trim the stems and root from the beet.
If you’ve got a bunch of beets, keep the greens and cook them up for a nice warm side salad. (Click that link for a recipe.)
Chop the beet into large bite-size chunks.
Set aside in a large bowl.
Do the same with the turnip …
… and the carrot, all going into the same bowl.
Trim the leaves and the flat, white end off the celery and dice it fairly small.
Put that in a separate, smaller bowl from the root veggies.
Smash the garlic with the flat of your knife, then mince it very small.
To make sure the garlic gets distributed evenly, put it in the same bowl with the chopped celery and stir together.
NOTE: This is not a very precise recipe. Beets can vary a lot in size, same as garlic cloves. That’s why I listed such big ranges for the celery and garlic. Scale each up or down based on how much you like them.
Chop the leek into bite-size pieces: rounds for the white part, cut the green part lengthwise before chopping.
Quarter the cabbage through the stem.
Then cut the stem out and chop the rest into thin strips, but not quite as thin as for cole slaw.
Finally done prepping! Now for …
Assembly
Grease the bottom of a roasting pan with bacon fat.
What, you don’t keep your bacon fat? You really should, you know. (Click that link to see how.) But if you don’t, use a little olive oil.
Cover the bottom of the pan with the cabbage, then top with the leek and the celery and garlic.
Top with the root veggies, and make sure everything is evenly distributed.
Season with salt and pepper.
Top with the kielbasa, cut into bite-size pieces.
Yes, those pieces are a little too big. And yes, I forgot to take a picture as I was cutting it up. Oops.
NOTE: My grocery store carries at least a half-dozen different brands of kielbasa and other smoked sausage. Out of all of those, there is a total of one that doesn’t have corn syrup, the local Five Star Brand.
Put the lid on and put in the oven for about a half-hour, then turn the temperature up to 450° for another half-hour.
Why the two temperatures? Root vegetables can take a long time to cook, but I didn’t want to dry out the meat or burn the cabbage. By starting out low, the veggies gives up some liquid and the meat gives up some fat. This keeps the cabbage on the bottom moist. The next half-hour finishes off the root veggies.
Looks pretty much like how it went in, doesn’t it? Stick a fork in a piece of turnip to see if it’s done.
Pull the sausage out first, then the veggies with a slotted spoon.
Put the veggies in a large serving dish.
Top with the sausage, and serve family style with spicy brown mustard on the side.
And that’s it.
A savory seasonal treat, perfect for cold autumn nights.
Ingredients
- 3-5 pounds kielbasa or smoked sausage
- 1 beet
- 1 turnip
- 1 large carrot
- 2-4 stalks celery
- 3-6 cloves garlic (see note below)
- 1 leek
- ¼ head cabbage
- bacon fat
- salt & pepper
Instructions
Pre-heat the oven to 350° F. Clean all the vegetables, but don't peel them.
Cut the leaves and roots from the root veggies - beet, turnip and carrot - and chop into bite-size pieces. Set aside in a large bowl.
Dice the celery and mince the carrot and mix together in a small bowl.
Chop the leek and kielbasa into bite-size pieces.
Quarter the cabbage, cut out the stem, and chop thin, but not as thin as cole slaw.
Grease a roasting pan with bacon fat. Layer the cabbage, leek, celery and garlic. Top with root vegetables and sausage.
Cover and cook for a half-hour. Turn the oven up to 450° F and cook another half-hour.
Remove to a large serving dish using a slotted spoon and serve famil-style with spicy mustard on the side.
