Roasted Root Vegetable Mash – An Easy Healthy Side Dish!

This roasted root vegetable mash is packed with flavor and makes for an easy and healthy side dish. All you need to do is roast, then puree parsnips, carrots, turnips and more. It’s a fun and tasty way to eat your veggies.

You might also like this cheesy broccoli cauliflower rice!

Sometimes I go a little over board buying vegetables. I have all these recipe ideas in my head but half of them don’t materialize.

That was the case this week when I bought a surplus of parsnips and turnips. However I did manage to make two root vegetable recipes – an Asian carrot and parsnips salad and a turnip fauxtato salad.

So with these leftover root vegetables I did what I always do…. roasted them. Roasting adds so much flavor to vegetables in my opinion and I do it often.

However this time, I went a step further and pureed them. This roasted root vegetable mash recipe was so good and the texture was just like mashed potatoes.

What Is A Root Vegetable?

Root vegetables are the edible part of a plant that is underground like carrots or potatoes. They all have different tastes and nutritional benefits.

Examples of root vegetables are: white potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, radishes, fennel, celery root, rutabaga, garlic, turmeric and ginger. Learn more about health benefits of root vegetables.

Ingredients I used For This Mashed Root Vegetables Recipe.

Today the vegetables I roasted were cauliflower, turnips, parsnips and carrots. And while the cauliflower is not a root vegetable, it tastes great roasted and mashed so I add it too.

Potatoes would also work well and it is a root vegetable, as would celery root.

The additional ingredients I used were olive oil, nutritional yeast, salt, black pepper and a little heavy cream.

I could have just boiled or steamed these vegetables but roasting them gives that nice caramelization that tastes so good.

On their own each of these vegetables have a wonderful, unique flavor but together they were fantastic.

Don’t you just love all the colors of fresh produce? The orange carrots, the yellow parsnips and how about that purple/magenta hue of the turnips? Even the green ends of the turnips are lovely.

How To Make Root Vegetable Mash.

1. First preheat the oven to 400°F. Then chop the vegetables and toss them with olive oil in a mixing bowl. 
2. Prepare a baking tray by spraying it with cooking oil spray and them spread the vegetables out on it. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Bake the root vegetables for 45 minutes until they are browned and fork tender.
4. Take them out of the oven and let them cool for a few minutes. Then add them to a high speed blender like a Vitamix along with the nutritional yeast and heavy cream.
5. Puree the vegetable mixture until it’s nice and creamy and a smooth texture.
6. Spoon into a large bowl and serve as a tasty side dish! Please scroll down and print the recipe card.

Note: If you don’t have nutritional yeast you can substitute grated Parmesan or Romano cheese. Or you can leave it out all together and it will still taste good.

Recipe Tips and Notes

• I used heavy cream to to help puree the vegetable mash in the blender and to add a little creaminess. While this recipe is vegetarian it is not vegan. To make it vegan you can use a little vegetable broth in place of the cream or even a little almond milk or water.
• If you don’t have any nutritional yeast, you can use parmesan cheese to add a little more flavor.
• Note you can use a food processor or immersion blender if you don’t have a high speed blender.
• This is a good base recipe but one that you can add different flavors too. For example you can add a little curry paste to give it an Indian flavor or Thai spices and then coconut milk instead of cream for a Thai flavor.
• You could also add whole garlic cloves to roast with the vegetables to add a different flavor. Or try roasted other vegetables like potatoes, celery root or sweet potatoes along with the others.
• Lastly you could add more broth and make this into more of a puree soup.

So there you have a nice, comforting and healthy side dish to add to your weekly dinners. You can try different combinations of vegetables and see how they turn out. 

I think even your pickiest of eaters will enjoy these mashed root vegetables.  The texture is as comforting as mashed potatoes but with more flavor and nutrition. Give it a try and let me know what you think.