Roast Your Vegetables

Sure, eat your vegetables-but roast them first. 

I wanted to post about salads made from roasted vegetables or a mix of raw and roasted vegetables, but my family ate it all before I could do it. This isn't the first time this has happened. 

I hear people complaining regularly about needing to eat more vegetables, and this is a great way to do that- and way more fun than another arugula salad. Even if all you have lying around are some old carrots, potatoes, and onions, you will learn to love them again if you roast them. 

As you can see in the pictures above, I sometimes burn whatever I forgot about in the oven. I am notorious for my astounding inability to multitask, and burnt vegetables are the result. Call me crazy, but they still taste good. The proof is in the pictures below, where everyone appeared in the kitchen and started mainlining broccoli and semi-burnt cabbage. No vegetables left behind. 

I LOVE roasted cauliflower, turnips, eggplant (peeled and cubed first), fennel, leeks, and tomatoes. Carrots are great with a little curry powder. Potatoes go without saying. Asparagus I drown in olive oil, salt, and minced garlic and they taste like garlic fries. 

Ingredients:
vegetables
olive oil, melted butter, or reserved bacon fat
salt (unless you are using bacon fat which is already really salty)
optional: curry powder, loads of minced garlic

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Cut your vegetables up however you like them. Toss them in a bowl with olive oil or melted fat, and sprinkle in some salt. Spread the vegetables out on a cookie sheet, a jelly roll pan, or a roasting dish, and put them in the oven. 

If you're roasting more than one vegetable and they are similar in size and consistency, you can roast them together, but for a pair like broccoli and cabbage you are better off roasting them on separate pans. 

If the pieces are pretty big you will have to turn down the oven temperature to around 375 so that the vegetables can cook through before the outside burns. 

Roasted cauliflower on an open face sandwich.