What have you made with parsley root? Was it good?

Hi all!

I decided to make a parsley root soup today. Ive never had parsley root before and was curious. Parts of it were very hard to chop but I thought once I boiled it, itd become a lot softer.

The result was that some pieves did not become soft at all and had a bark-like texture, and that the soup was VERY bitter. I know it wasnt any other ingridients I added because I make soups with the other ingridients regularly.

A thought I have was that maybe I boiled the soup for too long, creating a bitter taste, and that the parts that were too hard to chop though with my basic kitchen knife, perhaps I should've left those out.

Has anyone here used parsley root successfully before? What did you make with it and what are your tricks?

Are you using a variety of parsley specifically marketed for the root, or just the root of ordinary leaf parsley?

Hi Mk Neal!

I'm not 100% sure on the species because I harvested from a garden bed I'm renovating at my school, but my guess is that it's just regular garden Parsley and not any kind of hybrid or cultivar.

I suspect you may have found a difference between the root of parsley and "parsley root". My understanding is that they are very similar plants but different. Parsley is grown for it's leaves - you would use relatively small amounts for flavouring. Parsley root is also known as Hamburg parsley and is a root crop, although the leaves are also edible. Parsnip is in the same family but is generally only grown for it's root.
My suspicion is that a small amount of parsley root (edit) root of parsley would have been OK, but a larger amount is too strong. Note I've not grown parsley root, so this is only what I've read about.