Best Recipes for Winter Produce

By Food & Wine
Updated January 15, 2020
From smoky butternut squash soup to a winter-vegetable shepherd's pie, here are superb recipes for winter produce.
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Jicama, Citrus and Watercress Salad

Credit: PHOTO © DAVID MALOSH
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“I like big flavors through small bites,” says Steve Sicinski. His salad combines plenty of vibrant-tasting ingredients, like pomegranate, watercress and orange, so a little goes a long way.

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Celery Root and Mushroom Lasagna

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For this streamlined version of his luxe lasagna in bianco (white lasagna), Fabio Trabocchi layers flat noodles with a supremely rich sauce, along with a root-vegetable ragù, fresh mozzarella and whole basil leaves.

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Smoky Butternut Squash Soup

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This creamy soup gets a little smoky heat from canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, but then gets cooled down with a swirl of crème fraîche.

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Warm Winter-Vegetable Salad

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Winter vegetables like carrots, beets, parsnips and celery root are still plentiful in March and are terrific when roasted until sweet and blistered. Sophie Dahl loves the vegetables’; vibrant colors on dreary days.

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Winter Squash and Carrot Puree

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Baked Acorn Squash with Chestnuts, Apples and Leeks

Credit: Alexandra Rowley
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Halved acorn squash make perfect single-serving bowls. These make a great vegetarian main course for any winter holiday, but they’re also a festive accompaniment to turkey, ham or roast goose.

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Scallops with Grapefruit-Onion Salad

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Jarred pickled onions are usually relegated to cocktails, but Melissa Rubel Jacobson’s simple recipe combines them with scallops and ruby red grapefruit to create a deceptively complex-tasting dish.

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Sautéed Chicken with Celery-Root Puree and Chestnuts

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Mourad Lahlou poaches fresh chestnuts sous vide to accompany chicken breasts and buttery celery-root puree. F&W’s adaptation calls for store-bought chestnuts that are already peeled and cooked.

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Mushroom-and-Kale Tamales

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Anna Zepaltas’s mother would not have chosen to fill tamales with unorthodox ingredients like kale. But with an abundance of kale in her CSA box, Anna was desperate to find new ways to use it. “My mom uses epazote, and the taste really reminds me of kale,” she says.

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Winter Greens Salad

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Bitter produce like endives, radicchio and kumquats are in peak season in winter.

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Winter-Vegetable Shepherd's Pie

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You have considerable leeway in assembling the ingredients for this English-inspired meal in a dish, but there should always be carrots, onions, and at least three other vegetables, one of them green. Leftover mashed potatoes work fine to top the vegetable stew, which can be browned under the broiler or in a hot oven.

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Root Vegetable and Cauliflower Tagine with Parsley Yogurt

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For Aida Mollenkamp, spiced Moroccan tagines are a dinner-party staple because they can be made in advance. “In case something impromptu happens,” she says, “you’re not stressed about the main dish.” And tagines are incredibly versatile. This version is vegetarian, but lamb or chicken could be added.

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Winter Squash Gnocchi with Brown Butter and Sage

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This classic northern-Italian combo of sage-Parmesan-gnocchi-brown-butter is one of Andrew Zimmern’s “top five desert-island dishes.”

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Savoy-Cabbage-and-Sunchoke Pizzas

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This incredible pizza is topped with buttery braised cabbage, pureed sunchokes, crisp pan-fried sunchokes and gooey Emmental cheese.

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Beet-and-Blood-Orange Salad with Mint

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While the color of golden beets contrasts nicely with dark red blood orange sections, any beet variety—from standard red ones to the white-and-pink striped chioggia—will be delicious.

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Chunky Borscht

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Brothy and brimming with beets, parsnips, turnip, celery root, and slices of kielbasa, this earthy beet soup gets a finishing touch of sour cream and fresh dill. Serve it in big bowls with plenty of crusty bread for an appetizing cold-weather dinner.

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Turnip Casserole with Porcini Crumb Topping

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We love the earthy porcini topping on this rich and creamy turnip gratin, but it would also be fantastic on mac and cheese or other root vegetable gratin.

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Pear, Parsnip & Fourme d’Ambert Tartines

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Pears and parsnips create an unusual sweet-savory topping for Julianne Jones’s French-style, open-face sandwiches called tartines. Toasted briefly under the broiler, the tartines are best eaten hot, while the parsnips are still crisp and the Fourme d’Ambert (a mild blue cheese) is gooey.

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Spicy Scalloped Rutabagas with Parsley

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Winter Vegetable Chili

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This vegetable chili, thick with kidney beans and hominy (dried, hulled corn kernels), is deliciously smoky and spicy.

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Nordic Winter Vegetable Soup

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Trina Hahnemann calls the root vegetables in this simple vegetarian soup the “gold of Nordic soil” because they're high in nutrients and grow well in cold climates.

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Moroccan Carrot Salad with Oranges and Medjool Dates

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This gorgeous, lightly sweet salad is terrific with roasted chicken and great for a buffet.

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Sautéed Parsnips with Dates and Spiced Yogurt

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Jeff Cerciello says the inspiration to combine parsnips and dates came from Moro, a Moorish restaurant in London. To get the parsnips nicely browned, he cooks them on the stovetop in batches before roasting them with the dates, which caramelize in the oven.

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Pan-Roasted Chicken with Citrus Sauce

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John Sedlar flavors the bird with a range of citrus, including Cara Cara oranges, blood oranges and pomelos, but the dish is just as delicious with a simple mix of navel oranges and limes.

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