Day 21: Re-try a vegetable you don't like
Posted by kathryn in Vegetables
Today’s task in the 31 Days to a Better Diet is centred around getting you to eat more vegetables.
A while ago a reader commented she was re-trying some vegetables – ones she’d avoided in the the past, because she didn’t like them. A few years on, cooked differently and tried again, she was finding she actually enjoyed some of these hated foods.
So my challenge to you today is to re-try a vegetable you don’t like.
But I don’t like it
We all have different tastes, and these build up over time. As we try a new food, we make a judgement about whether we like it or not – which dictates whether we eat it again.
However, our taste buds change over time. There are foods I like now, which I couldn’t stand several years ago. For example I used to hate olives and coffee – but now they are two of my favourite flavours. If I hadn’t re-tried them at a later stage, I would never have realised how much I enjoyed them.
Moreover the first time we taste a food, it’s affected by how the food is prepared. Trying it again, prepared in a different way, can lead to a change in our enjoyment. Again, a personal example is carrots. While I eat them, I find carrots really dull. However recently I cooked them with arame, according to Lucy’s recipe and they were delicious. A revelation.
Today’s task
Today’s task therefore is to pick a vegetable you don’t like and try it again.
There are several things you can do, to change your experience of the vegetable:
- Cook it in a different way from before – try roasting in the oven, or grating and eating raw in a salad
- Toss the vegetable in an interesting dressing, like a tahini dressing or use olive oil and good balsamic
- Sprinkle with fresh. tangy herbs
- Barbecue the vegetable, and see how that affects the flavour
- Use it in a soup or stew
Or if your stuck for ideas, leave a comment below and we’ll see if other readers have suggestions.
Which vegetable are you going to re-try today?
Berries photograph by G & A Scholiers baby corn photograph by clayirving.
21 August, 2008
Comments
Hi Kathryn – it is so funny that you have this particular topic today and even a picture of baby corn! I have always hated baby corn! I went out for dinner with my Mum last night for chinese and had a vegie long soup. As I was picking out the baby corn and giving it to my Mum to eat, she says “oh this corn is delicious and sweet!” So I decided to give it a try and it was! I guess I have always had an aversion to baby corn because we used to have it as kids from the tin, but fresh baby corn is definitely very nice!
Bel: the little picture of corn is there to remind me to re-try some baby corn this weekend. It’s the only vegetable I could think of that I really don’t like – I always flick the spears over to Richard when we have Thai. I won’t have time to do this challenge today, but am hoping to find some fresh baby corn on the weekend and try it out properly at home.
Glad to hear you enjoyed the baby corn – there’s hope for me yet.
ooh i can’t believe you guys don’t/didn’t like baby corn! it’s fantastic.
i have aversions to a few different veggies, but it’s usually something to do with the texture. for example, i hate the ‘furriness’ that green beans can have, and sometimes mushrooms give me the creeps if they are a bit slimy. i much prefer them fresh – anyone have any ideas for using mushrooms in a salad?
It’d have to be kale, the only veggie I can remember completely refusing to eat, except I have never seen it in a shop. The one we had was homegrown and I think had been picked too late. I sort of felt it needed pounding with a rock before it’d be edible.
Otherwise it’s one of the list of veggies I will eat but am not crazy about. Which’d give me a good few to choose from: turnips, swedes, radishes, radiccio, endive.
LC – mushrooms marinated for 10min in balsamic vinegar are nice. Or there’s nothing wrong with plain. Or how about very briefly stirfried so they are warm but not cooked, with snow peas.
Swedes for me. I bought some beautiful, tiny teeny ones.
Will use Maggie Beer’s gorgeous Cook and Chef recipe, sans, of course, the bacon.
when i was little, my mom made me stay at the table until i finished my eggplant. i’ve detested it ever since. but i bought some at the farmer’s market on the weekend (the color was gorgeous, i couldn’t pass it up) and tried it stir fried with fresh rosemary, olive oil, and grated cheddar. it was pretty good.
Gwyneth – I’ve recently discovered turnips, the young white ones you can buy, with the green tops. They’re in season at the moment and beautiful and you can use the leaves as a vegetable.
Kale I love, but it does need a bit of cooking, with garlic in my opinion. Then tossed with olive oil and a bit of lemon juice – it’s delicious. I actually had cavalo nero, which is black kale, for dinner last night cooked in just this way. And then the remainders on toast this morning.
I don’t think there are any vegetables I don’t like, though I could probably live without swede.
I can’t stand the texture of lima beans, can’t eat cabbage or brussel sprouts because they give me severe flatulence, don’t like the flavor of parsnips. Any suggestions for those?
Kathryn, your comment about flicking baby corn over to Richard’s plate made me laugh out loud! :)
I like your advice to tackling this task of trying a vegetable you don’t like. I never used to like spinach, but then realized it wasn’t the spinach so much, rather they way it had always been prepared. Found the same with radishes and cauliflower, but now I eat all of them regularly, but not in the way that I had learned I just don’t like.
I still haven’t found a way to really like parsnips or kohlrabi, but will work on those when they come available in the market.
Bok choy is another I’m not overly crazy about. I’d try it again today, but I’m heading out on holiday so it’ll have to wait until next week. I’m thinking I’ll grill it!
Great idea. I hated brussel sprouts until I tried them in a recipe from Super Natural Cooking. They were great! Kale is another longtime hated veggie for me…but recently I’ve been trying and loving it in a number of recipes, and even sliced very thin and added to raw salads! http://doesabodygood.blogspot.com/2007/11/kale-more-than-garnish-at-cheap.html
I can’t think of a single veg that I wouldn’t eat – love ‘em all! Although, until I was finishing college, I never ate salad. Just couldn’t stand the raw vegetables… but now, I’m a complete salad lover.
Bananas on the other hand, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get over my hatred for them…
I retried avocado and actually quite enjoyed it. Bu the way, this series is pure genius. The Frittata tip rocked (among loads of others I am totally adopting)!
Ima: I love asking people what they don’t like – there’s always such interesting contrasts. The four vegetables you mention are four of my favourites.
For the parsnip haters I thought this post had an interesting idea – grating parsnip into chilli, to give the final dish a bit of sweetness. I also like parsnips roasted, with a bit of garlic and thyme.
And if you’re struggling with Brussels, try on of these three recipes. Personally I love them spiced up, or even in a curry.
I served a Thanksgiving dinner to a bunch of friends one year. When each person came into the kitchen they all said “Brussel sprouts, yuck” or ” Oh, I don’t eat those”. Every person tried them and all of them recanted their hate for brussel sprouts. I still make this but without the chestnuts and with veg. stock instead.
Here’s a link to the recipe:
http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/caramelized-chestnuts-and-brussels-sprouts
enjoy.
Turnip retried and enjoyed! I put one into a slow cooked moroccan spiced chicken stew, where all the flavour (and sharpness) just became part of (and improved) the overall flavour. The little stew flavoured turnipy lumps added nice texture, almost like dumplings.
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