Are you looking for easy, cheap, and delicious recipes with turnip greens? Low in calories, detoxing, and rich in fiber and folic acid, turnip greens are recommended for pregnant women and for those who are trying to control their weight. Our turnip greens pasta is light, healthy, and obviously extremely easy to make.
Turnip greens pasta is a dish typical of the Puglia region in southern Italy, where the pasta they use for this dish is called “orecchiette”, little ears, because of their shape. In the historic center of Bari, Puglia’s capital, there is a little street where local women make this pasta all day long in the open, sitting in front of their doorstep.
This is a lovely, full-flavored fall pasta with greens you can easily make at home. Even though a traditional Italian dish, its ingredients are easy to find. So, whether you want to remember your Italian trip or want to treat your family and friends to a healthy and delicious meal, this is an easy, quick, and cheap recipe for everyone.
We love creamy pasta like our one-pot cannellini pasta and mushroom and spinach dish, so when fall and winter arrive, this turnip greens pasta becomes one of our staples. Enjoy the traditional recipe and all its variations and let us know if you like it as much as we do!
How to Make Turnip Greens Pasta – Ingredients Tips
- Turnip greens. Like for every ingredient, I suggest you use organic turnip greens. Pick them possibly fresh and tender. You will need to remove the hardest parts of the stalks, so make sure you buy turnip greens that are as leafy as possible otherwise you risk that you have to throw away most of it. If you are not familiar with turnip greens, make sure you taste them before making this dish for many people because they have a bitter taste. This is what makes them nice and easy to digest, but it’s a flavor you might need to get used to.
- Red chili pepper. The original recipe uses fresh chili pepper, but if you don’t have it, the crushed red pepper in flakes will do just fine. I often use the dried flakes and the result is great. Even though I admit that with fresh pepper the outcome is more pungent and flavorful.
- The pasta. The original Italian recipe uses fresh short pasta. If you can’t find it in stores, you can easily make it yourself. However, if you just want to make this a quick dish, you really can use the pasta that you have in your pantry. You can totally use dry pasta but I suggest short pasta because spaghetti doesn’t really match this dressing.
- Dried ricotta. This is probably an ingredient that you can only find in Italy. It’s optional and not traditional to this turnip greens pasta recipe but it adds a lovely, hearty touch to the dish.
Turnip Greens Pasta – Directions Tips
- Cooking the turnip greens. The best way is to boil the turnip greens in slightly salty water and then keep the water for the pasta. However, you can skip this and cook the greens directly in the pan where you will incorporate the cooked pasta. If you do this, I suggest adding some water to make them cook nicely and a very little amount of salt because the recipe includes also anchovies that are already pretty salty. You can always adjust the salt later.
- Blending. This is totally NOT a step of the original Italian recipe of turnip greens pasta, but one that I sometimes do, especially when I find that the greens haven’t softened as much as I would have liked.
Possible variations
Even though the very original traditional recipe, even in Italy we make this pasta in many different variations.
- Vegan. If you are following a strictly plant-based diet and still want to enjoy this recipe of turnip greens pasta, you can just omit the anchovies. Not everyone likes anchovies, so it’s fine to remove them. On top, instead of the dried ricotta, you can sprinkle nutritional yeast.
- Meaty. Instead of anchovies, you can add fresh sausages and cook them in the pan together with the turnip greens.
- Colorful. Even the most hard-core traditionalists accept to add either fresh or sun-dried tomatoes. This particular version is lovely. It sweetens the bitterness of the turnip greens and makes the sauce smoother.
- No turnip greens? What if you can’t find turnip greens but you really want to go for pasta with greens? Replace them with broccoli and keep all the other ingredients. If you use broccoli, I would probably not add tomatoes, but fresh sausage is a good match. Broccoli is a nice match also with bacon or, if you are coming back from Italy and you had the chance to go shopping in Rome, guanciale. This is the cured cheek used to make the typical Roman dishes of bucatini amatriciana and spaghetti carbonara.
Do you like fish? Check out our easy swordfish and cherry tomatoes pasta recipe!
Turnip Greens Orecchiette Pasta
Equipment
- 1 pot
- 1 Skillet
- 1 skimmer or strainer
Ingredients
- 1 kg turnip greens
- 360 gr pasta of your choice (short type of pasta, no spaghetti)
- 4 anchovies preserved in oil
- 1 fresh red chili pepper (or 1 tsp of dried crushed red pepper flakes)
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 tbsp olive oil extra-virgin
- salt to taste
- grated ricotta salata (optional)
Instructions
- Remove the hardest parts of the stalks of the turnip greens still leaving some of it and wash them thoroughly. Now cut everything into smaller pieces.
- In the meantime, put a pot full of water to boil. When it boils, add a generous pinch of coarse salt and the turnip greens for a few minutes until tender.
- Meanwhile, heat up the olive oil and the clove of garlic in a skillet. Being careful not to burn the garlic, add the chili pepper and the anchovies. Little by little, the anchovies will melt. You can help them by crushing them with a spoon.
- When the turnip greens are soft, drain them with a large skimmer and drop them in the pan with the pepper and the anchovies. Sauté everything until well coated.
- Once you removed all the turnip greens from the water, you can use the same water to cook the pasta according to the package instructions. Some cook the pasta and the turnip greens together by adding the greens in the last three minutes of the pasta cooking time. This way, the result will be a little less creamy but still delicious. If you want to make it creamier, you can add a spoonful of the cooking water and give a quick blend with an immersion blender. This is not traditional practice but I don't think anyone will feel offended if you do it!
- Drain the pasta al dente and add it directly to the pan with the greens together with a ladleful of the water used to cook the pasta and now rich in starch.
- Stir everything over medium to high heat.
- Serve hot. According to the original recipe, it's served without cheese on top. If you want to add some, dried ricotta is a good match.
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