In attempting to eat better, we’ve made an effort to get more whole foods onto the plate. Busy schedules make cooking a challenge, which often means we just skip the vegetable serving. We’ve started doing “meal prep,” making multiples of the dish for a week’s worth of eating. To this scheme came oven roasted veggies and a nice solution to the “eating healthy” problem.
There is a bit more upfront work, cleaning, peeling, and chopping when cooking a sheet pan full of vegetables. The upside is that you do the work when you have time and eat better when you don’t.
These premeasured meal additions can be tossed into a morning scramble or microwaved while the evening’s entree is cooking. We even toss a ½ cup of veggies on a lunch salad. Keeping the seasoning simple makes it possible to match any evening’s meal by just adding an herb or spice blend.
So start by lining a baking sheet with foil, spray it lightly with cooking oil and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Then gather up a mix of vegetables. Keep in mind its a multi-meal prep, so figure about 4 to 6 ounces a serving. The mix is your choice. For us it’s usually an onion, 3 or 4 carrots, 2 stems of broccoli, and a couple of ribs of celery. During wintertime I’ll add root veggies to that mix. In all, I’m chopping up about 3 lbs of veggies to get 5 meals.
Take your time chopping so that you get a consistent size on all the pieces. One inch cubes work well. The time spent getting even chunks will make it easier to get an even roast.
All that chopped up goodness gets put in a large mixing bowl. Drizzle a bit of oil, a pinch of salt and pepper and then toss to combine. It works to add oil, salt and pepper in a couple of stages to get an even coating on all the pieces.
Spread the veg mix in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. If you have an extra large batch you can use two sheets and stagger the racks in your oven. Keeping it to a single layer makes all the vegetables cook at the same rate.
Roasting generally takes about 20 minutes, but check and turn at the ten minute mark. The exception would be when you have a lot of hard root vegetables. Here you just keep turning at ten minute intervals, until done. Done is a personal preference. We like to have some browning, but not get too soft. Keep in mind that portions of the roasted mix will be reheated to serve later.
From the oven you return the mixture to that large mixing bowl in which you’ve put a tablespoon of red wine vinegar and one to two tablespoons of some finely chopped fresh herb. Tarragon and thyme get used a lot in our house, but I’ve also minced garlic or ginger. More complex flavoring, say a touch of harissa spice for some heat is usually done on smaller portions rather than the main batch.
Toss the mix to get an even coating and then let it sit a bit. At this point we portion it out into 16 ounce deli cups and when cooled place in the fridge until needed.