Spin off from Roast Dinner posts

I use a steamer but as you say not cooked for 20 mins maybe 10 once water boiling

Potatoes for mashing about 15 - 20 minutes. Cabbage 10 minutes. Carrots, chopped 10 - 15 minutes.
I often roast carrots along with the parsnips, but I won't be heating my oven, they are going into the air fryer now.

I tend to cook my veg so that it is just about cooked not so al dente that it breaks your teeth but no soft squidgy

I adore brussel sprouts, they have to be just right with a slight crunch never order them when out to eat as they seem to be cooked to within an inch of their little lives 🤣

I cook veg for two in the microwave, using a glass bowl and a silicone top or saucer. Sliced carrots, parsnips, broccoli florets, cauliflower florets, sliced cabbage - savoy, sweetheart, drumhead - with a teaspoon or two of water each take three minutes, frozen peas one minute less. Swede and celeriac are steamer jobs.

Cabbage is delicious very thinly sliced and stir fried with thinly sliced onions, lots of blackpepper and mixed with crispy bacon and it's fat and then a little double cream.

Freezes well.

Lovely with Roast Beef

kittylester

Cabbage is delicious very thinly sliced and stir fried with thinly sliced onions, lots of blackpepper and mixed with crispy bacon and it's fat and then a little double cream.

Freezes well.

Lovely with Roast Beef

I think we must have been separated at birth, that’s a firm favourite in our house 🤣

I loathe squidgy veg. I call it Blackpool veg after a trip we took there many years ago and we’re served this stuff …over cooked and sitting in water. Couldn’t eat and went out for fish and chips.

My Mum used to boil cabbage to death, she didn’t eat it herself!

Veg steams in the microwave for a couple of minutes I just test it with a knife and bung it back again if it’s too hard.

My nan used to boil cabbage with bacon ribs, literally for hours, then serve in complete with the water it had been cooed in and bread to mop up the water

Microwave for me. I have a couple of great microwave steamer bowls. Max 4 minutes whatever veg is going and less for some

It started life as a Gary Rhodes recipe but has evolved. We love it.

That was to GG13

Mr. B steams them, not sure how long for but they’re never too soft.

DH always said his mother put the Christmas sprouts to cook a fortnight before Christmas. They were always bright yellow and mushy.

kittylester

Cabbage is delicious very thinly sliced and stir fried with thinly sliced onions, lots of blackpepper and mixed with crispy bacon and it's fat and then a little double cream.

Freezes well.

Lovely with Roast Beef

Yes! I do a similar thing with cabbage and onions stir-fried in a wok using lard for the cooking fat. I stir in some ground cumin, ground turmeric, and ground fennel seed before adding the cabbage, and then some butter if it seems too dry. Then I sometimes add broken cashew nuts and/or bits of leftover peppers or chopped tomatoes. Goes with everything.

Ooh, that sounds lovely baggs

Oopsadaisy1

My Mum used to boil cabbage to death, she didn’t eat it herself!

And the amount of salt thrown in when cooking (shock)

Broccoli is horrible when it's over cooked instead of that vibrant green, it goes a rather dull colour same with green beans. I call it "Old School boil the guts out of vegetables " destroy any vitamins and reduce them to mush whilst simultaneously giving the home the all pervading essence of boiled cabbage thus signalling to any visitor I'm an old person getting on I don't like my vegetables so al dente that they're barely cooked, although if stir fried with some spices and flavourings then I think they're preferable crunchy, particularly Pak Choi. I really like Savoy Cabbage stir fried and it's lovely as a component of Colcannon. I adore Brussels it's that time of year again! It's funny how almost unanimously the younger generation hate them, along with Christmas Pudding. When I was young such things were put on one's plate and it was just accepted they'd be eaten and they were!

Cauliflower is a boring vegetable if it doesn't have some cheese sauce on it unless it's cooked Indian style ,Cauliflower Bhaji divine!

Roasted cauliflower with bacon and garlic is great.

Also, broccoli tossed in a small amount of flavoured oil garlic or chili and then roasted.

I'm on a roll now - great beans, steamed and then stir fried with garlic and ginger or with cherry tomatoes.

I microwave carrots for three minutes and then add in baby corns and cook for another two. Beans and tender stem broccoli get eight or nine minutes in a steamer with a separator between them. Then I turn off the heat and leave them until I’m ready to serve. I will try your cabbage recipe Baggs. I remember rubbing my mother in law seriously up the wrong way when helping out with Sunday lunch by questioning her adding bicarbonate of soda to the cabbage. She said it kept it green. I said it destroyed the vitamin C. She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

My Mum also put bicarb in green veg, she was upset when I didn't do it. She also used to peel the veg Christmas Eve and leave them in water, which I also didn't do.

Broccoli and carrots, sometimes potatoes tossed in oil and roasted in the oven with Middle Eastern spices is a favourite in our house.

I was a cabbage hater for much of the early part of my life. That's because it was always brutally boiled, whether at home, at my Nanna's or at school. Nanna always compounded the problem by serving something like tapioca or sago for dessert. School was even worse because some dinner ladies made you eat it all up before you could have pudding, or made you stay behind and clean the table if you didn't. It made me sick more than once.

I could eat pickled red cabbage. That was fine, in fact I liked that. But my cabbage epiphany came when I was doing some IT contracting for BP Finance – when you're BP and you want somebody to look after the money you don't just ask a bank to do it, you buy a small bank of your own for the purpose. That allowed me to use the free (yes, I know) corporate canteen in Finsbury Circus HQ, which was actually very good. One day there was a tray of what I took to be pickled red cabbage and I put a big dollop on my plate. But when I tasted it, it wasn't pickled. It was also very good. It had some firmness about it, and it didn't have that awful boiled cabbage smell and taste. Just a bit fresh-vegetabley with a touch of nutmeg but not so much it was overwhelming. This cabbage should win awards!

So then I started buying cabbages, shredding them fine, showing them the steam from the kettle, just enough to take the crunch away but still staying firm to the bite, and a wee bit of grated nutmeg. Yum, I couldn' get enough!

These days I'm lazier in the kitchen most of the time. For my winter veg I get big jars of sauerkraut from a Polish grocer – it's called kapusta kiszona there and comes plain or with a choice of additives – and just put a big dollop on the plate with the rest of the meal.

It's a sin to cook carrots, they are so much nicer raw, at least decent varieties are. Parsnips should only be roasted. I only discovered parsnips in adulthood, we never had them at home. I think this was a parental backlash against the wartime surfeit of boiled parsnips everywhere. But I love roasted parsnips, they are the best reason I know for having a roast dinner.