There is a vegetable on the winter stall that looks like it landed rather than grew. Pale green or deep purple, round as a cricket ball, trailing leafy stalks at odd angles like a little garden sputnik. That is kohlrabi, and the first time you meet one you would be forgiven for having no idea what to do with it. Here is the headline: it is one of the most useful, most cheerful things you can take home this season, crisp and faintly sweet, and the best kohlrabi recipes ask almost nothing of you.
If you have walked past it before because it looked odd, this is the year to stop and pick one up.
What kohlrabi actually is
Kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea, Gongylodes Group) is a brassica, the same species as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale and Brussels sprouts. The difference is what the plant has been bred to swell. Instead of a head of leaves or a flower, kohlrabi puts its energy into a rounded stem that grows above the ground, and that swollen stem is the bit you eat.
The name is German, from Kohl (cabbage) and Rübe (turnip). You will also see it sold as German turnip, turnip cabbage, or knol khol. Despite the turnip nicknames, it is not a true turnip. It is a cabbage relative through and through, just an unusually good-looking one.
As for the flavour, think mild and clean, crisp and juicy, with a faint sweetness. It sits somewhere between a broccoli stem and an apple, which is why it is as at home in a raw salad as it is in a hot pan.
How to choose a good one
Size is your first cue. Reach for small to medium bulbs, roughly under 7 to 8 cm across (about the width of your palm). The smaller ones tend to be more tender and sweeter; larger bulbs can turn woody in the middle, which no amount of cooking quite fixes.
Then trust your hands:
- Feel for firm and heavy. A good bulb is dense and heavy for its size, with taut skin and no give.
- Skip the tired ones. Avoid cracks, spongy patches or brown spots, all signs a bulb is past its best.
- Check the leaves, if attached. Bright, firm green foliage is a lovely freshness cue. Limp, yellowing leaves mean it has been out of the ground a while.
This is a great one to ask the grower about, because kohlrabi does not always turn up in big numbers. Ask what came in this week, whether the green or the purple is sweeter right now, and whether the leaves are worth taking home too. The answer is usually yes.
How to store it
First job at home: twist off the leaves and stems. Left attached, they keep drawing moisture out of the bulb, so the bulb softens faster than it should.
Pop the bare bulb into a perforated or loosely closed plastic bag and keep it in the crisper drawer, where it will happily last around two weeks. Store the leaves separately, wrapped in a damp paper towel inside a loose bag, and use those within about three days.
How to cook it
One prep note before you start. Kohlrabi has a tough, fibrous outer skin that does not soften with cooking, so peel it away with a knife or a sturdy peeler and work with the pale flesh underneath. The leaves are edible too, so set the good ones aside rather than binning them.
The dead-simple one: raw slaw
Raw is where kohlrabi really shines, and a slaw is the easiest way in. Peel a bulb, then grate it coarsely or cut it into fine matchsticks. Toss with grated carrot, a little shredded cabbage and a mustardy dressing, and you have a crisp, faintly sweet slaw in the time it takes to boil the kettle. It stays crunchy for hours, so it is a good one to make ahead.
The one worth lingering over: roasted
Cooked, kohlrabi turns mellow and golden, and roasting is the treatment worth setting the oven on for. Peel and cut into roughly 3 cm chunks, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast at about 200°C for around 30 minutes, turning once, until the edges are golden and the middle is tender. Serve it as you would any roast vegetable, alongside a Sunday roast or piled onto a grain bowl. The faint sweetness deepens in the heat and the chunks pick up crisp edges.
A couple more ways to use it up:
- Mashed: boil peeled cubes in salted water until tender, then mash on their own or blended half-and-half with potato for something a little lighter than the usual mash.
- Stir-fried: slice into thin matchsticks and add to the wok with carrot and other quick-cooking veg, where it stays crisp and takes on the sauce.
- The leaves: use young, fresh ones raw in a salad, or sauté or steam the rest like kale or silverbeet.
For a quick flavour steer, kohlrabi loves the company of carrot, apple, mustard, lemon, a good olive oil, and soft herbs like dill or parsley.
When it's in season in Victoria
Kohlrabi is a cool-season brassica, and it grows best in Melbourne's colder months. In Victoria you will mostly find it from autumn into winter (that is the southern-hemisphere autumn and winter, roughly March through August). It is fast to grow, usually ready around 8 to 10 weeks from sowing, and it is frost tolerant. A touch of frost can even make it taste sweeter, which is one of the small pleasures of eating with the seasons.
If you would like to plan the rest of the trolley around it, our guide to what's in season in Melbourne over winter rounds up its cold-weather companions, from leeks to cavolo nero.
Better bought fresh and local
Kohlrabi is at its crisp, sweet best when it is fresh, and freshness is exactly what buying local gives you. A bulb that came out of the ground nearby, rather than one that has spent a week in transit, holds its juicy crunch and faint sweetness far better. Buying it in season from the person who grew it is the surest way to get it at its peak, and to pick up a few tips while you are there. If shopping this way is new to you, how to shop a farmers market is a friendly place to start, and why shop at farmers markets makes the wider case.
Come and find it with us
Yarraville Farmers Market is a monthly daytime market at Bassett Reserve, where Yarraville, Kingsville and West Footscray meet. We open on Sunday 27 September 2026, 8am to 1pm, then run on the fourth Sunday of every month, and kohlrabi is exactly the kind of curious, seasonal, grower-grown produce we cannot wait to have on the stalls.
To be first to know when we open, join our mailing list. And if you are a grower or maker in the west who would love a spot, we would be glad to hear from you: come and become a foundation stallholder.
More Market Finds
The Market Finds series digs into one great ingredient at a time. Here is the rest of the shelf:
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