Al Dente

David Joachim's Roasted Root Vegetable Recipe

I love cooking root vegetables around the holidays. They're at the peak of ripeness, come in a variety of colors and flavors, and make the perfect side dish. Some root vegetables, like potatoes, store energy as starch. Others, like carrots and turnips, store their energy as sugar. Either way, as root vegetables roast, their starch breaks down into sugar, and the sugar combines with proteins and browns. At the same time, aromatic components in the vegetables get concentrated, resulting in rich, sweet flavors that can’t be attained by boiling or steaming the same vegetables. This simple recipe captures the deep flavor of roasted root vegetables for the holiday table or any next meal.

Roasted Root Vegetables

1 large onion, halved and cut into 1/2-inch thick wedges
1 large sweet potato, peeled, halved, and cut into wedges
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 medium celery root, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 turnip, peeled and cut into bite-size chunks
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon chopped garlic

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. On a rimmed baking sheet, toss together onions, sweet potato, carrots, celery root, and turnip. Add oil and toss to coat. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Spread out in a single layer. Roast in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Add garlic, and continue roasting, until the edges of most of the vegetables have browned and they are uniformly tender but not mushy, for 5 minutes more.

Serve immediately or cool and refrigerate in a tightly closed container for up to 1 week.

Makes 6 servings

Excerpted from The Science of Good Food (Robert Rose, 2008) by David Joachim and Andrew Schloss with A. Philip Handel, Ph.D.

--David Joachim

David Joachim's Perfect Turkey Tips

As Thanksgiving approaches, people always ask me about the best way to cook turkey. The challenge of cooking turkey is keeping it moist and cooking it evenly. Turkey is lower in moisture than other birds, containing only about 58% water. No matter how you cook it--roasted, grilled or deep-fried--here are four tips to help make sure your holiday bird stays moist and comes out evenly cooked.

1. Soak the turkey in brine or salted water to increase its moisture content by up to 10%. Brining at home also helps whole birds cook more evenly because it allows the dense legs and thighs to cook through before the tender breasts dry out. To brine a natural (not self-basting) 12-pound turkey, soak it in a nonreactive container in the refrigerator or in an iced cooler in a mixture of 2 gallons water, 1-1/2 cups kosher salt, and 1 cup sugar. Dissolve the salt and sugar before adding the bird and choose a container just large enough to hold the bird and brine so that the turkey remains submerged the entire time, about 12 hours. Note that a self-basting turkey is essentially a lightly brined turkey injected with liquid fat, water, and seasonings to flavor and moisten the meat.

2. You can also cook whole birds more evenly by chilling the breasts with ice packs before cooking so that they don’t overcook before the legs and thighs are done.

3. For roasting, it helps to start the turkey breast-side down to help shield it from the heat, then turn it breast-side up halfway through cooking. On a grill, a vertical roaster keeps the tender breasts farther away from the bottom heat for more even cooking. For the most even doneness using any heat source, it’s easiest to cook turkey in parts rather than as a whole bird.

4. If the turkey is stuffed, the stuffing should reach at least 165°F (74°C) to eliminate harmful bacteria. However, by the time the stuffing reaches this temperature, poultry meat is often overcooked and dry. The safest and most flavorful method is to cook the stuffing separately. To flavor it, spoon some of the drippings from the turkey over the stuffing before cooking it.

--David Joachim

Excerpted from The Science of Good Food (Robert Rose, 2008) by David Joachim and Andrew Schloss with A. Philip Handel, Ph.D.