How to Roast Vegetables

Featured Pro: Curtis Stone
Category: Cooking
Time: 3:41


CURTIS STONE: Hey, I’m Curtis Stone, and my next GMC Trade Secret will show you how to roast the perfect vegetable. And don’t worry, it’s not limited to just potatoes. You can pretty much roast whatever you like. We’ve got all sorts of things here.

I’m going to start off with this little guy, the acorn squash. It’s a beautiful, beautiful squash, and it’s so easy to do. You literally want to just put your knife straight through the middle of it and then straight through the other side. And then you’ll see the seeds in the middle. So what you need to do is grab yourself just a little spoon and just take out some of those seeds, nice and juicy. That’s what we’re looking for. So you get rid of some of those seeds. You don’t have to be too pedantic about it. A couple of seeds left in there is absolutely fine.

So you’re going to go through it in half again, like that, and then in half again. So you’re just cutting it basically into little wedges. You leave the skin on. Now, some people like to eat the skin and some people like to eat around it. It doesn’t really matter. But it’s such a beautiful color and looks so nice on your plate.

There’s a couple of keys to when you’re roasting veggies that you should remember. The first thing that I think is really, really important is don’t put too much stuff on your tray. So next I’ve got some beautiful potatoes, and what I’m going to do with the potatoes, the little red potatoes, is just cut them in half. Now, the whole idea with roasted potatoes is to make sure that there’s plenty of surface area that’s going to come in contact with your tray. So pick up your potatoes and throw those in as well.

And then one of my favorite things to roast are beets. The great thing about roasting vegetables is you really intensify the flavor, because you’re dehydrating them to a certain point. So you’re cooking a lot of the moisture out of them. So what happens is the flavor gets more and more intense, which is great when you’re roasting. Look at those beautiful beets.

So the next important thing that you’ll need to remember is only put vegetables with other vegetables that are going to take the same amount of time to cook. Once you’ve got them all in their tray, a good drizzle of olive oil, okay, just like that; then a few aromatics. You could put some garlic if you liked. I love fresh thyme, so I'm just going to bruise some of those leaves off and then just sprinkle that all over the top.

So this one will go into the oven first because it’s going to take longer than the next tray we’re going to do. Now, the next tray, what I’ve done is I’ve gone along and I’ve peeled some little baby onions, which are super fast. Okay, so I’m just going to throw those on. And I’ve also got some brussel sprouts. Now, I wouldn’t do the brussel sprouts from raw, because if you did, what would happen is they’d get really dry, okay. So what you want to do is blanch them in boiling water just for a minute and then you can roast them. So you’re going to get some color on them. Same deal – a little drizzle of olive oil and then a good sprinkle of salt; plenty of fresh cracked black pepper on both.

Okay, let’s get these guys in the oven. And then I’ve got some that are already done. Smell that. There’s nothing better than the smell of those roasted veggies. Look at that – so good. Those potatoes are really nice and crispy. The squash has gotten beautiful and brown. You can see that golden color. So we’ve got beautiful veggies, everything from beets, brussel sprouts, little baby onions. We’ve got this beautiful squash which I just can’t help myself. It’s a little bit hot. Let me just have a little piece. Beautiful roasted acorn squash. I love it. I’m going to even eat the skin. Look at that – delicious.

I’m Curtis Stone, and that’s your GMC Trade Secret.