Recipe

Crispy Roasted Sunchokes

Freshly dug sunchokes filling a harvest bin, knobbled and pale

Acid-parboiled, smashed, then roasted hard. The parboil is not optional and the reason is digestive.

Serves
4
Time
15 minutes prep, 30 minutes cook

Ingredients

  • 1.5 lbs sunchokes, scrubbed thoroughly, cut into 1/2 inch rounds
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, for the boil
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil or rendered duck fat
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp local honey and 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice, for the glaze
  • 2 tbsp fresh thyme or parsley, chopped
  • Flaky Maldon sea salt

Method

  1. Acid-parboil. Put the sliced sunchokes in a pan of cold water with the 2 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar. Bring to a boil, drop to a simmer, and cook 8 to 10 minutes until barely fork-tender. Drain and dry thoroughly.
  2. Smash and roast. Press each round with the bottom of a glass to crack the skin. Toss with the oil or duck fat, garlic, salt and pepper. Spread on a sheet pan and roast at 400F to 425F for 12 to 15 minutes a side, until deeply golden and crisp.
  3. Glaze. Whisk the honey with 1 tbsp lemon juice and drizzle over in the last 2 minutes to set. Finish with thyme and Maldon.
The culinary why

The acid parboil is the whole recipe. Sunchokes store their energy as inulin, a carbohydrate people cannot digest, which is where their reputation comes from. Simmering them in acidulated water breaks the inulin chains down into digestible fructose before they ever see the oven.

Smashing makes the crust. Cracking the skin open creates jagged edges, and jagged edges are what shatter against a hot pan. A smooth round just browns.

Harvest after a frost. Cold converts stored inulin to fructose in the ground. A sunchoke pulled after a hard frost is sweeter and gentler before you have done anything to it.

From the garden

My love of farming came from my love of nature and being outside. When I ran away from school to live and work on a farm, I opted for a farm outside Hot Springs, North Carolina, mostly due to the fact that they owned around 100 acres of land close to the Appalachian Trail and the beautiful ecological diversity of Western North Carolina.

I enjoyed learning the ins and outs of farming, but I really loved hiking and exploring their property and the surrounding area. Every day after work I would go follow game trails, or make my own, looking for morels, waterfalls, or long range views of the mountains. I would go find swimming holes, or fishing holes to catch brook trout to fry up with the vegetables we were harvesting.

Digging around for Jerusalem Artichoke tubers is as close to foraging as I get on the "production side" of the farm. What really gets me excited finding lion's mane mushrooms on a fallen oak, or the elm oyster mushrooms growing in the swamp, or images of tulip morels burned into my mind when I close my eyes in the shower or at night. All of these things that go with the farming lifestyle and working outside with nature bring me peace and joy, even when nature is often working against the actual farm enterprise.

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