Oven Roasted Veggies

Oven Roasted Goodness

                Greetings everyone, and thanks for joining us for another installment of Simply Playful Fare.  We hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day.  If yours was anything like ours, you might have over-indulged just a touch.  It might be a good idea to add a few extra veggies to the plate this week just to balance it out.  We’re quite fond of veggies around here, and we have several ways we like to eat them, but one of our favorites is the oven roasted veggies.

If you have someone who doesn’t like veggies, you should try and trick them with these.  It worked on me.  I used to hate cauliflower.  I thought it tasted like dirt.  One of my best friends, Greg, tried to convince me that it was really good, because it tastes like squeaky dirt.  This didn’t fool me.  I knew better than to eat things that tasted like dirt from my years eating dirt as a youngling.  This became an issue when I met Crystal.  Crystal likes cauliflower.  Because I was fond of her, I decided to give it another try.  We steamed up some cauliflower, and hit it with some butter and garlic.  I still thought it tasted like dirt, but this time, it tasted like dirt with butter and garlic.  I was ready to give up on cauliflower forever, when Crystal’s grandma showed us oven roasted cauliflower.  It changed my perspective on all veggies forever.

Oven roasting your veggies may present a few problems.  First of all, it’s time consuming.  Notice that I didn’t say labor consuming.  They are, in fact, easier to make than most other cooking methods.  To do them right, however, you’re looking at a thirty minute to one hour commitment.  This is easy to overcome with minimal planning.  The other issue is it takes over your oven.  If you usually do your main course in the oven, this may be tricky to balance.  My suggestion is to plan meals accordingly.  You’re still heeding our advice and using a weekly meal planner, right?  Of course you are.

Today, we are going to walk you through our recipe for oven roasted broccoli.  This recipe can be adapted to just about any vegetable.  Our favorite is a blend of broccoli, cauliflower, and baby carrots.  That stuff is almost as good as Die Hard.  It’s not the veggies fault that they aren’t as good as Die Hard, it’s just a lot to live up to.  We are also very fond of oven roasted green beans.  I digress.  Here’s the basic idea and process.

Ingredients:

2 pounds Broccoli, cut and prepped

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon garlic salt (see note)

1 ½ teaspoons fresh ground black pepper

The Process:

1.)  Turn the oven to 450 degrees.  We want this to be hot.  It will help give your veggies an awesome crispness.

2.)  While the oven is heating up, add all remaining ingredients to a large bowl.  Toss everything to coat.  Here is the aforementioned note:  garlic salt works very well here.  We used to use chopped garlic, but we have found that we get a much more even and consistent flavor with the garlic salt.  Also, they chopped garlic can’t really withstand this long in the oven at this high of a temperature.  It will burn, and that is not tasty.

3.)  Get yourself out a nice rimmed baking sheet and give it a spray with some non-stick cooking spray.  Add all your veggies to the tray and spread them out evenly.

4.)  Place your baking sheet in the hot oven.  This is where the fun starts.  You need to watch your veggies.  You don’t need to watch them like a hawk, but you do need to keep an eye on them.  We give ours a stir every 15 minutes just to make sure they are getting cooked and crispy all over.

5.)  Cook them.  I would love to tell you the exact amount of time you should cook these for, but I’ve never used your oven.  This batch took us about 45 minutes.  It really all depends on how crispy you like your veggies.  We really like the florets on our broccoli nice and crispy, so we tend to go for the longer cooking time.  Just play around with it and you will find what you like.

That’s really all it takes to make one of the tastiest side dishes that you can serve with any meal.  Really, they go with just about anything.  We like vegetables this way so much that there have been a few nights that we simply make a meal out of them.

We really hope you all enjoy your vegetables this way.  You’ve all got to try this one.  Once you get comfortable with cooking your veggies this way, you may find yourself planning your meals around your side dish as opposed to the main dish.  Until next time, stay healthy!

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us

Jeff Sykes