Mary Berry adds one extra ingredient to make parsnips ‘extra crispy’ and delicious
Parsnips can often be an overlooked side dish and if cooked incorrectly can be bland or soggy, but Mary Berry has a cooking trick to get parsnips perfectly crispy.
It turns out there is a cooking knack for making parsnips, and it requires one essential ingredient to get them gloriously golden and extra crispy.
Mary Berry has shared that the secret to making crispy vegetables is to coat them in semolina, a yellow flour which will ensure your parsnips come out the oven with a mouth-watering crust.
She said: “Crunchy sweet parsnips – the perfect side dish. The addition of semolina gives them a lovely crispy outside.”
Semolina can fully absorb the moisture on parsnips and has a coarse texture, which helps the parsnips brown and go crispy once they are roasting in the oven.
Not only can this technique be applied to parsnips, but Mary Berry has also used semolina to enhance her roast potatoes to give them an extra crunch.
How to make perfectly crispy parsnips
Ingredients
- Four large parsnips (around 500g) cut into five-centimetre strips
- Three tablespoons of sunflower oil
- 25g of semolina
- One tablespoon of paprika
- One tablespoon of chopped fresh thyme
Kitchen essentials needed:
- Roasting tin
- Salt and pepper
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Instructions
Cook the parsnips in boiling water for around four minutes on a medium heat. Then, drain and leave to cool.
Preheat the oven to 220C (200 for Fan or Gas Mrk 7).
Add one tablespoon of sunflower oil to the roasting tin and place the tin in the oven for five minutes to get hot.
Add the remaining two tablespoons of oil to a bowl, then season the parsnips with salt and pepper and toss in the oil to fully coat them.
In another bowl, mix the semolina, paprika and thyme together, and add to the parsnips. Mix well to ensure the parsnips are fully coated.
Carefully remove the roasting tin from the oven and place the parsnips in the tin in one single layer.
Place the tin back in the oven and roast for around 20 minutes until golden and crispy. Make sure to turn the parsnips over halfway through the cooking time.
Take out the oven and your perfectly crispy parsnips are now ready to serve.
