Roasting Vegetables

I have discovered that this is a magical way to prepare vegetables! And so far I've had awesome outcomes resulting in the kids devouring a whole pan of cauliflower and being sad when all the broccoli was gone. If that isn't magic, I don't know what is.

Roasting vegetables is a super simple way to cook them that brings out the natural sugars in them, therefore 'caramelizing' them into a sweet treat. It really sounds too good to be true and I don't know why it's taken me so long to discover it. It's basically taking a vegetable, cutting it into uniform chunks, tossing with olive oil, salt and pepper then roasting it at a high temperature in the oven.

Here's three articles I found that are great at explaining it and also include some great tips and recipes.

From WebMd

From the food section of Salon.com

And another from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food

My first experience was with cauliflower a few months ago. Using this recipe as a base, I now make a batch about once a week or whenever my market marks their cauliflower down to 99 cents because they have one or two little brownish spots that can easily be cut off. It turns out so delicious, I could eat the whole batch myself. I've also made green beans with great success and just last week I tried broccoli using Snack Girl's recipe. Her recipe requires the oven to be heated to 500 degrees. That's the hottest my oven has ever been! It made me a bit nervous but nothing exploded or caught on fire and even though broccoli has never been my favorite, I really liked how it turned out. And who knew it would be a perfect after school snack! It was so funny, when hubby came home my son told him, "sorry, we didn't save you any broccoli!" Hubby wasn't to upset about that since he has not caught the roasting vegetables excitement bug as I have. I cannot WAIT to try some more of these ideas and recipes!