Oven Baked Spicy Parsnip Bubble & Squeak

With parsnips and cabbage to be used up, this oven baked spicy parsnip bubble & squeak was the answer.  I did consider making little individual bubble & squeak “cakes”, but then decided to just make a bubble & squeak loaf, which I can slice – mostly to avoid the extra work that involves, to be honest.  This will freeze nicely too, so I don’t have to eat it all in one go!

I’d already microwave cooked the parsnips and cabbage and had them boxed up in the fridge to use up, so the weights I used were “what I had”, rather than being specific/neat weights of ingredients 🙂

There are a few more ingredients than I usually use in a recipe, but I had them in the kitchen already.

A lot of these ingredients can be considered “optional”, so you can just make a simple parsnip & cabbage bubble & squeak if that’s all you’ve got!  It’s very flexible.

I oven baked this bubble & squeak in my toaster oven in a foil lined enamel pie dish.

Ingredients:

• 400 grams of cooked parsnip – I microwaved the parsnip in 3-4 minutes
• 150 grams of cooked cabbage – I had microwaved the cabbage already.
• peas – half a mugful, defrosted frozen peas
• ½ teaspoon cumin
• ½ teaspoon onion granules
• ½ teaspoon chilli powder
• ½ teaspoon pepper flakes
• 1 green chilli (I like it hot)
• a knob of butter
• seasoning of your choice, to taste

Method:

1. Chop up, or mash, the cooked parsnip and cabbage into small pieces, add to the peas.
2. Add the spices and knob of butter and mash everything together.  Add any seasoning (salt and pepper) you like.  How smooth or rustic/lumpy you leave it will be a personal preference.
   
3. Line a baking tin and spray it with oil.
4. Spoon the spicy parsnip and cabbage mix into the dish. For a solid parsnip bubble & squeak “cake” press the mix down, or leave it loose if you prefer a mountain of crispy food.
5. Bake in the oven at 180°C / 170°C fan or toaster oven for 25-30 minutes, until it looks the colour you like it to be.

Once cooked, you can serve immediately, or leave it to cool; bubble & squeak can be kept in an airtight container in the fridge and used within 2-3 days, or frozen whole or in slices!

Cooled, Sliced and Frozen:

Once my bubble & squeak had cooled, I tipped it out and sliced it, then wrapped each slice in foil and popped them in the freezer.

To reheat, I can defrost one in the fridge overnight, then bake in the foil the next day, or remove it from the foil and microwave it in 1-2 minutes on high power in a microwave safe dish.  It can be microwaved from frozen, I’d remove it from the foil and put it into a microwave safe dish, then microwave for 2-3 minutes and check it’s hot all the way through.  When reheating food like this there’s no “danger”, it’s just a question of being hot enough to serve and all you’re needing to do is make sure you don’t get surprised by a cold bit in the middle 🙂

Serving Parsnip Bubble & Squeak

This is a flexible dish, which you can eat as the main part of a meal, by serving a pile of this as a baked vegetarian dish, but here’s how I usually serve it:

• With a poached egg and a pile of baked beans
• Serve a portion as a side dish to any meat based meal or Sunday roast!
• Use as a pie topping instead of a standard potato topping, to add extra “interest” and flavour.  This is great as a pulled beef brisket based pie topping when I’ve cooked Slow Cooked Pulled Beef Brisket, or just served alongside it!

This is a good winter warmer, when parsnips are readily available and can be bought cheaply, so a nice frugal belly filler!