how do I cook with Parsnips ?

My first year of growing parsnips...now what do I do with them ?

Can I eat them raw like carrots?

How do you eat them? Baked, fried, roasted, soups?

Peel them, chop them into thick fingers, deep fry like chips.  Or fries, or whatever you guys call them.

Parsnip soup also parsnip and pear soup are good .
Roast parsnip with roast potatoes
Parsnip and potato mash
Grated in stews
Parsnip and carrots cooked together
Parsnip crisps worth the effort too

David

My family tradition is to sautée parsnips in butter.

Shred them up with equal amounts of potato and carrot, mix in some egg and enough flour to bind it all together and then make "potato pancakes".  include any herbs you like, a little salt and some pepper to taste.  Pan fry till golden brown.

Parsnips also work well in a fritter made with amaranth.  

On occasion I'll use my peeler to make parsnip ribbons, which I tangle into loose balls and then deep fry til crispy.   Tastes awesome with a honey mustard dressing.

Of course they are great in hearty winter stews with beef, venison or other four legged red-meat beasts.  Add onions, carrot, celery, potato, greens of some sorts, and  a little tomato if you like.  Can't go wrong adding a little red wine too.  salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, rosemary, bay. all that good stuff.  This is a good one for using up soup bones.  

I liketo harvest one third of my parsnips just before the ground freezes.  I get the rest in the spring just as soon as I can get back into the ground.  I always leave a few in the garden to flower.  they have a really nice flower and also produce a lot of seed.  If you can find and open pollinated variety of parsnip, its an easy one to keep going year after year.  
Happy eating.

Parsnips are traditionally British here is a link to 125 recipes from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/search
just type in Parsnips

Roast them, by themselves or with other root vegetables like turnips, potatoes, carrots, and beets.  Delicious and sweet!

http://yummybeet.com/roasted-garlic-parsnip-white-bean-soup/

this is one of my favorite parsnip soup recipes. I'll also make a mash with 50/50 parsnips and potatoes.

Parsnips are awesome. They are not really all that well known here in the Netherlands, so I've been enjoying introducing them to people.
Roast chicken with roasted parsnips (and other roast veg) is pretty hard to beat.

Leave them in the ground until the frost gets to them, they get much sweeter then. They can stay in the ground for a good long time actually, (climate depending).

Depending on your type you may want to get rid of some, or most of the core, which can be woody in some varieties. Just cut lengthways down the parsnip and the again down the two halves. The core is then easy to cut away with a knife. You don't need to get all of it, so a quick swipe will do.

Rus's Roast veg Recipe:
Shove a large shallow tray with a glug of oil into a 180c (about 350f in old money) oven and preheat it for 15 mins or so.
Chuck the parsnips and/or beets (pieces or small wholes),  turnip, sweede,  pumpkin, a couple of small onions, and sweet potato, plenty of salt and pepper, a couple of whole  twigs of rosemary and a garlic bulb or two. Stir it around to coat it all with the oil and seasoning and roast for 30 mins or so, turning once or twice.
Remove from the oven and enjoy with a glass of red wine, good company and  candlelight.

The trick is not to crowd the veg too much or they don't crisp up that well, they tend to steam (still delicious though) and to remember that they don't take as long as roast potatoes do.

WOW thanks everyone ! Time to get cooking.

Cook into a root crip stew.
Mix potatoes ,turnips carrots, rutabagas etc I like this with some bone broth lots of onion and garlic. Fantastic in the cold months

I love parsnips cubed and fried with butter. They are like candy almost. Unfortunately my friend missed out on something good when I tried and failed to serve them “poison parsnip” from the meadow. (I ate it and it didn’t give me blisters!) I also put them in soups. The soup tends to taste especially sweet with parsnips, as with sweet potato.

A couple of notes, not recipes. First, however you cook them, the thing that makes parsnips worth growing is the unique way they fill the "hungry gap" as they used to call it, here in Appalachia at least. The time when homesteaders/peasants were most likely to be hungry is not winter--there are wild animals to hunt, domestic livestock to slaughter, frozen and dried ...no, the hungry gap is in spring, when it's not a good time to hunt or slaughter, the frozen and canned and dried and root cellared stuff is used up, a garden is planted but isn't yielding anything yet--but the parsnips are at their best, and are hardy enough to come through till spring in most climate. The other biggies is eggs--chickens lay most heavily in spring, and resume laying in late winter.
On saving seed: be prepared for a six foot plant with a thousand seeds--but you almost have to do this every year, because parsnips are one of the plants whose seeds have the shortest longevity.