Want to organize your week's meals, knock out an easy cooking project, and get a head-start on eating healthier? One of the easiest weekend kitchen tasks you can check off your list is to roast a large batch of vegetables. Seem elementary? Well…it is!
Oven-Steamed Beets. Photo: Tuuka Koski
We're all about big batches of make-ahead ingredients (simmered beans and cooked grains, for example), but we particularly like to use the technique with root vegetables and squash. Butternut, carrots, beets, celeriac, turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, and potatoes are all excellent candidates for large-batch roasting. They keep well once cooled, and will stay fresh throughout the week. They're tough enough to stand up to being reheated, but they're also delicious at room temperature—or even cold, straight out of the fridge.
To successfully roast a large batch of hardy root vegetables or squash, choose specimens that are close in size, or chop them to similarly-shaped and sized pieces. This will ensure they roast evenly. Coat them with a thin layer of fat (like olive oil or coconut oil), season well, and spread them out in a single layer in a sheet pan or shallow baking dish. Here's where things really get heated up: You're going to want to crank the oven temperature to 400-450˚ so the vegetables can caramelize and turn an attractive golden-brown. A lower, slower cooking time will result in mushy vegetables.
Rotate the pan and stir the vegetables with a wooden spoon or spatula once or twice throughout the cooking project. You should be aiming for 35-45 minutes in the oven, depending on the size of the veg, of course. We recommend eating a serving or two as soon as they're done (they're too good to wait for!), but be sure to cool the rest completely before packing in a container and storing in the fridge. From there, the world's your oyster—err, turnip. Here are some ideas to get you started:
