Ok pal, I can't think of a more elemental or easy cooking technique than roasting vegetables. There are all sorts of methods and ingredients that you can bring into the mix to make things complicated, but at essence, all you need to make something delicious is: (1) a vegetable to roast, (2) salt and pepper, and (3) olive oil.
Things I think about when doing this are usually just taste and texture. I personally like baking the vegetables until they've got a little bit of burn on the outside and are soft on the inside without being mushy. Often, the roasting will bring out a sweetness, as well as a mellowness, to the vegetable in question (especially carrots). As you experiment with different vegetables, you'll develop your own sensibilities and you'll come to really appreciate the changes in flavor that roasting brings. This is one of the fun things about cooking: you learn that doing different things to food can drastically change the way you experience it (which observation, I guess, should be pretty obvious in the context of cooking, but anyways...).
So, here's the template recipe (some variations follow):
Ingredients:
1. roasting vegetable
(some examples: carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cherry/grape tomatoes, fingerling potatoes, diced sweet potatoes, baby bok choy, brussels sprouts, asparagus)
2. olive oil
3. salt and freshly ground pepper
To Cook:
1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees, Fahrenheit
2. Place vegetables in a roasting pan or on a cookie sheet. (Note: I personally like to chop whatever I'm roasting to the size that I'm going to ultimately serve them)
3. Coat vegetables in olive oil, evenly. You can either drizzle the oil onto the vegetables and then toss them, or yuo can get a mister for your oil. I don't recommend drowning the vegetables in olive oil. The goal is a pretty light coat (otherwise, the end result will feel really heavy and greasy...note that this isn't always bad)
4. Sprinkle the veggies with salt and freshly ground pepper. I usually have a pretty heavy hand with this. I'll sprinkle, then toss the veggies, then sprinkle again. I like salt. What can I say?
5. Place the pan in the oven; shift them around, occasionally (once or twice, total) and just wait until the vegetables are done.
You can gauge this by (1) sight, (2) smell, (3) trial and error. The thickness of the vegetable will, of course, play into how long it takes to cook, but otherwise, it's just a matter of knowing what you like. For something like asparagus, that's relatively thin, I'd say it hovers in the 10 minute range; for broccoli, start checking on it around 20 minutes; a little more than than for brussels sprouts; etc.
Some Exceptions: Beets and Corn
Both roasted beets and roasted corn are really great sides, but you shouldn't use the above method. Instead, heat the oven just the same, but prep these guys accordingly:
Beets - (1) cut the ends off, (2) wrap the beet completely in tin foil. Stick the beets on a pan or sheet and stick that in the oven (they'll leek out a certain amount of water and sugar in the course of roasting, which will gunk up your oven if you don't have something to catch it). Give them about 45 minutes (more or less depending on their size).
Once you can put a small knife or a fork in them easily, they're done. Let them cool for a bit, unwrap them, and then peel off the skin. It should come off easily, but again, let them cool or else you'll burn your fingers.
Bonus recipe - Warm Beet Salad: roast up some beets (say, 4). Once they're out of the oven (and still pretty warm) peel them and cut them into eighths. Toss the beet pieces in a bowl with (1) vinaigrette dressing, (2) blue cheese or goat cheese crumbles, and (3) some kind of chopped nut (I prefer walnuts or pecans). This will blow your mind.
Corn - assuming it's an unshucked ear of corn, no further prep is necessary. Just stick it in the oven and rotate, occasionally. The outer layer will crisp up, and once it's evenly (and lightly) burned, you can pull out the corn, shuck it, and eat it.
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