Although there are a lot of plant-based foods, vegetables are often thought to be one of the fundamental foods of plant-based diets. This is because they have high concentrations of vitamins, nutrients, and minerals. They are also often cheaper and easier to access; even in the middle of winter, you can still find many varieties of vegetables that are in season.
Vegetables are also exceptionally versatile. You don’t need to love the salad to love the vegetables. Finding ways to eat them beyond salad is one of the tips for getting on with long-term plant-based food.
Do you need some ideas? Here, we leave you some tips on how to cook with winter vegetables, touching on each type of vegetable. Pay attention.
Arugula
If you’re going to use winter vegetables to make a salad, the arugula is a great option. The arugula is amazing as a green salad, especially the wild arugula. A perfect dressing will be one made from tahini or a balsamic vinaigrette. The sweetness of both can help balance the bitterness of the vegetables, especially because the rucula can be quite bitter to the palate.
You can incorporate nuts or cheese into your salad to balance the bitter, slightly spicy flavor of the arugula. A good way to balance the flavor is by adding roasted beets or red pepper.
Mustard leaves
Like arugula, the mustard leaves taste quite strong. They are probably the most assertive winter green leaves to cook, the most recommended thing will be to skip mustard leaves and incorporate other spices and flavor oils such as garlic oil, ginger, chillies, sesame oil, or anything that has a strong flavor of that works well with the spicy flavor of mustard leaves.
An excellent way to eat the mustard leaves is in an Italian frittata or tortilla, with eggs, roast red pepper, and sweet potato. Mustard leaves can also be an excellent companion when combined with pork or poultry.
Swiss chard
One of the best ways to eat Swiss chard is by stir-frying it in a pan with a little garlic and olive oil and to top it off, a touch with a few drops of lemon juice. When cooked so fast, chards are always an excellent option to have at hand to make quickly and combine them with tofu, eggs, or any other protein.
The stems of Swiss chard are also edible, even though some people find them too fibrous to eat stir-fried; in that case, the recommendation is to get them straightened.
Radish Leaves
The tops of the radishes and carrots are of a beautiful winter green that suggests a delicious flavour when prepared correctly.
Incorporating the radish leaves into a pesto sauce will give you an incredible taste in the preparation. Due to its harsh texture, the first thing to do is wash it for a couple of minutes. Later dry them and add them to the food processor along with the rest of the ingredients for the pesto, and voila.
Serving the radish bulbs and vegetables previously cooked on the stove with butter is also a very good option for salad. The leaves have a slight bitter flavor that can be dressed perfectly with a little lemon juice and jar vinegar. Just as the chard stems, the radish leaves can also be pickled.
Romaine Lettuce
You can use this type of lettuce in a simple salad, or you can get a little more creative and grill them. The grilled Roman lettuce is delicious and is also fibrous enough not to get rid of while on the fire. Its sweet, smoky flavor can make a Caesar salad on another level. For a terrace day with friends is a perfect solution.
Eat inside? No problem, you can use the lettuce leaves to make vegetable tacos, or as bowls for hummus, quinoa dish, feta cheese or perhaps for olives in a peck. Mediterranean inspiration to the fullest.
Spinach
Spinach has a softer flavour than some of the other winter vegetables on this list, meaning you can work with almost anything. That’s why, the next time you’re ambitious when you buy a bag of spinach in the supermarket, do it all and test your imagination.
Spinach cooks extremely quickly, so use this to your advantage and add it to as many recipes as you can think of, using as many spices as you can think of. Be creative and don’t limit yourself.