The Ultimate Guide to Root-to-Stem Cooking

You can eat every single part of a carrot, broccoli head, or fennel bulb—including the parts you have been discarding your entire life. Root-to-stem cooking is the practice of using the whole vegetable: the leaves, the stalks, the seeds, and the peels. Most of the flavor in a vegetable lives in the parts that home cooks throw away.

Broccoli Stalks Are Better Than Florets

The broccoli stalk is denser, sweeter, and more structurally satisfying than the fluffy top florets. Most cooks discard an entire stalk worth of broccoli every single week.

Use a sharp knife to cut off the tough outer skin. The interior is tender, almost sweet, and works perfectly sliced thin for stir-fries, chopped into soups, or grated raw into slaws.

Pro-Tip from the Chef: When running daily prep at a farm-to-table restaurant, our recipe developers figured out that broccoli stalks, peeled and sliced into coins, were actually more popular on our vegetable plate than the florets. They hold their texture longer under heat and absorb sauces more aggressively.

Every Part of Every Vegetable

Carrot Tops (Pesto)

Carrot tops are slightly bitter and deeply herbal. They work identically to parsley. Blend a bunch of carrot tops with olive oil, garlic, parmesan, and walnuts for a perfectly bitter, unique green pesto.

Celery Leaves (Salads, Stock)

The inner pale yellow leaves of a celery bunch are intensely aromatic. Treat them like fresh herbs: fold them into salads, use them as a flat parsley substitute, or throw them into your next batch of homemade stock.

Fennel Fronds (Garnish, Compound Butter)

The feathery green fronds on top of a fennel bulb taste like a lighter, sweeter version of dill. Fold them into softened butter with lemon zest to create an elite finishing butter for fish and seafood.

Potato Peels (Chips)

Toss potato peels in olive oil and salt, then roast them at a high heat until they are completely crisp and paper thin. You just made a free, intensely flavored snack out of something you were about to throw directly in the bin.

Stop Peeling Vegetables You Don't Need To

Zucchini, cucumber, sweet potato, and eggplant do not require peeling for most recipes. The skin contains concentrated fiber and nutrients.

When you have a random pile of vegetable scraps and stems and no clear plan for them, plug them straight into our free Fridge-to-Feast Recipe Generator tool. We'll match your exact scraps with the perfect recipe instantly.