Oven-roasted vegetables

✅ The essentials

Vegetables cut into pieces, a little oil, salt, a baking sheet, and twenty to forty minutes in a hot oven. They brown, caramelise on the edges and turn sweet, and it is the simplest way to get people who do not want vegetables to eat them. The oven does the work, you do something else.

🍳 The method

1. Preheat the oven to 220 °C (425 °F), fan setting if you have it.
2. Cut the vegetables into pieces of the same size, about three centimetres (an inch or so). The hard ones smaller than the soft ones.
3. On the sheet, with two tablespoons of oil per kilo, salt, pepper, and whatever you like: thyme, paprika, garlic in its skin. Mix with your hands, spread in a single layer.
4. Into the oven, and turn once halfway with a spatula.
5. It is done when the tip of a knife goes in without forcing and the edges are golden. A squeeze of lemon or a dash of vinegar at the end wakes everything up.

📏 The landmarks

• Zucchini, peppers, eggplant, mushrooms: twenty to twenty-five minutes.
• Cauliflower, broccoli, sweet potato: twenty to thirty minutes.
• Carrots, fennel, onion wedges: thirty minutes.
• Potato wedges, butternut, red kuri squash: thirty-five to forty minutes.
• Beet wedges: forty-five minutes.
• To put everything on the same sheet: the long ones first, the quick ones fifteen minutes later.

⏱️ How long it takes

Ten minutes of preparation, then twenty to forty minutes in the oven without you.

🩹 If it goes wrong

Soft and not browned: too crowded on the sheet, or the oven not hot enough. Ten more minutes at 220 °C, spread further apart. Burnt outside and hard inside: pieces too big, or too high in the oven. Cut smaller next time. Overcooked: as a soup or mashed with a drizzle of oil.

🍽️ Make it tonight

A sheet of roasted vegetables while the marinated chicken cooks in the pan: everything is ready at the same time.

🥘 The linked base recipe: Oven-roasted vegetables (serves 4)

• 1 kg seasonal vegetables (zucchini, peppers, carrots, potatoes, onions, butternut…)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves in their skin
• 1 sprig of thyme or 1 teaspoon paprika
• Salt, pepper