Winter is when people prefer to be cloaked in coziness. It’s candles for the early nightfall and fires to chase off the chill. It’s a season of filling feasts, steaming soups, hearty stews, and roasted everything—sometimes made just to bask in the added warmth of the stove and oven. In this cold, dark time of year, nature naps. This slumber leaves us to get by with a smaller selection of winter season vegetables than you’ll find at the height of the summer farmers’ market frenzy.
But that doesn’t mean you’re totally out in the cold when it comes to fresh, seasonal produce. You just have to adjust your expectations and, at times, learn to adapt. While the bountiful harvests of summer and fall are behind you, there are still plenty of delicious winter vegetable dishes in your future.
Your winter vegetables shopping list
Let’s take a spin around the produce aisle and talk about what winter season vegetables are ripe for the picking.
The first thing you might notice are quite a few fall favorites with seasons that slide into the early winter. Your gourds—like pumpkin and winter squash—are still in season, and store well for roasting and pureeing well into winter. The cruciferous crew are still here to help bring flavor and nutrition to your cold-weather menu. You’ll find Brussels sprouts and cabbage, along with an assortment of hearty greens like kale, Swiss chard, and collards.
Other winter season vegetables to put on your shopping list include:
- Carrots
- Celery
- Onions
- Leeks
- Herbs
- Beets
- Turnips
- Rutabagas
- Parsnips
- Potatoes
- Sweet potatoes
Don’t forget the winter fruits
Citrus is possibly the most exciting part of winter produce shopping. The fresh oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and clementines bring a pop of vibrant color and bright flavor to winter’s more limited spectrum of sensory experience. You can also add more splashes of red to your winter diet with cranberries and pomegranates—two additional colorful fruits that are in season.
Though you’ll have a hard time growing a single blood orange in your Minnesota backyard, sunnier climates produce a kaleidoscope of winter citrus that lands in a market near you. So enjoy a juicy wedge of sweet-and-sour Cara Cara orange at its peak of flavor—especially if you shoveled a foot of snow off the driveway so you could go to the store.
Winter vegetable recipes to warm you up
There are plenty of easy ways to cook winter vegetables. So, you don’t always need a recipe to enjoy your produce hauls. In fact, roasted winter vegetables of all varieties can be hearty staples of your cold-weather meal plans. And all you need to achieve deliciousness is a sheet pan, a little oil, some seasoning, and a hot oven.
If you would rather start with a recipe, we’ve picked some crowd favorites for you to try. Sneak a peek at the winter vegetable dishes you can feature this season:
- Whole30 Loaded Baked Potato (Original only)
- Creamy Potato and Leek Soup (Original and Plant-Based Whole30)
- Whole30 Sausage and Potato Soup (Original only)
- Whole30 Herbed Rutabaga Oven Fries (Original and Plant-Based Whole30)
- Whole30 Roasted Radishes and Rainbow Carrots (Original and Plant-Based Whole30)
- Balsamic Chicken Sheet Pan Meal (Original only)
- Whole30 Skin-On Garlic Smashed Potatoes with Crispy Prosciutto (Original only)
- Whole30 Almond-Crusted Onion Rings (Original and Plant-Based Whole30)
Savor the season with winter’s best produce
Even though winter lacks the wide selection of produce the other seasons have, you can still practice seasonal eating during this time of year. It’s an approach that benefits your tastebuds and overall health. That’s because picking produce on the basis of seasonality helps you eat as many different veggies as possible—at the peak of their flavors—all year long.
It’s a great way to eat during your January Whole30 and into your food freedom. But eating just seasonal vegetables isn’t the only way to fill out your plate in a healthy way. During the winter, you might find yourself cooking more frozen vegetables. And that’s totally okay. They’re picked at their peak and frozen quickly to preserve flavor. They’re not like the frozen veggies of yesteryear—a brick of green ice that eventually turned into spinach. No matter if it’s a winter season vegetable or not, enjoy your fruits and veggies during these cold, cozy months.
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