Honey Soy Roasted Parsnips

The easiest roasted parsnips cooked in 20 minutes? Yes, these gorgeous honey soy roasted parsnips will have you swooning with their sweet, sticky roasted goodness. I will warn you, these parsnips are a fantastic side dish and are highly addictive - Mr NQN and I often fight over these as we love them so much!

I decided to make Mr NQN these parsnips roasted in honey and soy and seriously these were the most delicious side dish you could ever want. The stickiness and sweetness is SO good! I had super large parsnips around 350g/12oz each so cutting them in half wasn't feasible so we ended up with roasted parsnip fries flavoured with honey and soy. These roasted parsnips aren't crunchy like potato chips, they're more like honey roasted carrots in that they are soft, sweet and sticky.

Tips for Making Honey Roasted Parsnips

1 - Cutting parsnips in this "hot chip" or baton shape means that they take less time to cook.

2 - Some recipes call for parsnips to be cooked for 40 minutes but we parboil them first for a couple of minutes and then roast them on high heat in the oven in the most delicious marinade. This creates the most delicious, sticky, sweet parsnip chips.

3- I used cornflour or fine cornstarch in this just to give the parsnips a delicious light coating. You can also use potato starch or regular flour.

4 - These parsnips go really well with pretty much all meat dishes. We had them with these spinach stuffed chicken breasts.

Looking for other parsnip recipes? Try my creamy, silky parsnip puree or pancetta wrapped parsnips (which we love for Christmas) or these maple garlic butter parsnips!. And for a complete turn of events, parsnip cake with cream cheese frosting or a Kitchen Garden Cake!

While we both love these parsnips Mr NQN and I are very different. After work Mr NQN is always on his phone playing chess online. I told him that he had to put his phone down and look at me while I was talking to him because it’s very unnerving talking to somebody whose eyes always drift downwards towards their phone and then you can feel half of their attention switching off away from you.

"Do you want me to look at you in the whole time?" he asked. "Sure!" I responded.

I told him about a story about what happened that day. It was fairly short story a maximum of two minutes total and he just kept looking at me in the eye and I was highly engaged and I actually really enjoyed this short conversation but when it was over he slumped down, exhausted and said that that 2 minutes was so tiring. "I need a nap," he said dramatically. And I thought to myself how can one person find a conversation engaging and another person finds it exhausting? Admittedly I am a very big eye contact person but he really did have a bit of a nap afterwards!

So tell me Dear Reader, do you find eye contact tiring or engaging? And how do you feel about parsnips?

Honey Soy Roasted Parsnips

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

• 700g/1.5lbs parsnips
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon cornflour/fine cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Black pepper

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 200C/400F fan forced and line a large baking tray with parchment. Place a pot of salted water onto boil. Peel the parsnips and top and tail them. Cut into a hot chip or a baton shape around 2 inches long. Simmer the parsnips in the water for 2 minutes and then drain in a colander.

Step 2 - In a large bowl whisk the honey, oil, soy sauce, cornflour, garlic powder, salt and black pepper together. Add the parsnips to this mixture and toss to coat the parsnips batons well. Place in a single layer on the prepared tray and avoid over crowding them. Roast the parsnips for 15 minutes. Turn parsnips over and then roast for another 5 minutes until caramelised on all sides.