How to Perfectly Roast Vegetables for a Nourishing and Delicious Meal

Carmen Fourie
Dec 26, 2024
7 min read

This roast vegetable dish is my go-to dish in the colder months when we are hosting or having dinner with people. I am not someone who typically enjoys eating vegetables, but I absolutely enjoy these roast vegetables.

Jump to the summary of making this dish

This dish is easy to make and easy to adapt based off your preferences, what you have on hand and your health choices.

I do not consider myself a particularly good cook or particularly skilled in the kitchen - yet this dish makes me look like a pro when I serve it.

Skill level required: Basic. Beginner friendly.

I don't consider myself particularly skilled in the kitchen. The role of making food in our home is one that is still quite new to me. I only took it on after I had a baby and she started eating, and I wanted to ensure that we ate three healthy meals a day, with healthy snacks. My skill and ability in the kitchen grows as my desire to serve wonderful healthy food for my family grows. Making food is not a passion of mine, but eating healthy, nourishing food with my family and connecting over meals is. What this means is - if I can make it - you can make it!

How to make this roast vegetable dish

This dish is a few different vegetables cut up and cooked (mainly) through the process of roasting, with an oil/fat, and a few herbs and spices. You can adapt most of these elements to suit your needs and preferences.

The vegetables - making them healthy

We don't eat many vegetables as part of our health choice. Yes, I know this is very different from the whole "vegetables are healthy and you should load your plate full of them" we grew up with. I too once ate loads of vegetables because I believed I was supposed to, to be healthy. Anyways we don't anymore and the summary of why comes down to the bioavailability of nutrients. Just because a food is high in some nutrients does not mean it is easy for the body to absorb or that the nutrient is in the most usable form for the body. Vegetables contain anti-nutrients and can inhibit thyroid function (we choose to eat in a way that best supports our metabolic function). A book I often recommend that covers this and a lot of other things related to improved metabolic function is How to heal your metabolism by Kate Deering.

The important part of this dish is making sure all the vegetables are cooked properly

For vegetables to be healthier we ensure that they are very well cooked. But even if well cooked vegetables isn't something you consider in your health choices - the important part of this dish is making sure all the vegetables are cooked properly. There are many different vegetables that go into this dish, and they don't all cook at the same rate.

Here is what I do to ensure the vegetables are cooked well at the end of the dish:

I cooked the broccoli on the stove for a few minutes before adding it to the dish, because broccoli can easily burn without being cooked. I used a bag of frozen broccoli and simply brought it to boil for a few minutes on the stove.

I also cooked the butternut in our instant pot for a few minutes so that the butternut was already cooked and only needed to roast a little when it went into this dish.

Butternut in the instant pot:

Peal the butternut and cut it into large cubes. Put the cubes into the instant pot. Add sea salt. Add 1 cup of water. High pressure cook for 5 minutes (or less).

Tip: I cook all of our root vegetables in the instant pot before I roast or fry them. This way I make sure they are very well cooked. You'll see a common recommendation with root vegetables in the "pro-metabolic" health world is to ensure they are well cooked and eaten with fat.

The other vegetables:

Onion typically takes quite long to cook and therefore I added it first. Followed by raw frozen (but defrosted under running water) corn.

I don't pre-cut everything and add it at the same time. I cut and add the vegetables as it roasts, and I add them in order of how long they take to cook.

What I included in this dish, but you can include any vegetables you like:

White onion
Yellow pepper
Red Pepper
Cherry tomatoes
Corn
Garlic
Butternut
Broccoli

I like making this dish colorful, so I literally pick different color vegetables. The main vegetable of this dish though is the peppers - so I wouldn't omit those.

How long does this dish take?

This depends on the vegetables you put it in and your type of oven. I do find it is a more hands-on dish than other ones I make and a bit more time consuming given that almost all the vegetables I add I cut and cook from their raw whole form. You can speed up the process by buying pre-cut vegetables, but for the most part I prefer to make this dish from scratch (except in this case the corn was already removed from the cob).

The dish takes longer because there are lots of vegetables in it that require cutting, so the faster you can cut, the faster the dish goes. I recommend starting with the onion and garlic.

How to roast the vegetables

You do not need a fancy oven. You just need a functioning oven with a grill/broil function. I have made this dish in a fancy oven, an old oven and now in our new toaster oven. Our toaster oven is my favorite, but any oven works.

Our new toaster oven

We recently got a NINJA toaster oven to replace using a microwave, but also to not need to run our big oven for smaller items, and to be able to do things our big oven can't do (like dehydrate and air fry). We got a NINJA two compartment toaster oven and found it didn't work for us, and we replaced it for the current one we have (and love) which is the NINJA XL 10 in 1 - it is great!

For this dish I used the "Air Roast" Function. This I think simply means it was on roast function using the convention feature (the fan).

To end the dish when all the elements were nicely cooked - I did less than 2 minutes on broil/grill on high. I strongly recommend you stare at it during this time, because it can so easily burn!

I used the roasting dishes that came with the oven with parchment paper on it. Typically, we prefer to only roast using glass or stainless steel, but I currently don't have two glass/stainless steel dishes that fit into our new toaster oven (I will source some). I do feel slightly better that the food was not directly on aluminum, but I am not entirely convinced the silicon on parchment paper (undyed) is healthy... I'm still learning and figuring out how best to cook our things and mitigate risk, while also making cooking convenient.

The fat or oil

Our choice of health means we opt for saturated fat. We sometimes, but rarely for cooking, use monounsaturated and we avoid polyunsaturated fat (PUFA). For most of our dishes I use organic coconut oil. I also sometimes use ghee, butter or tallow.

For this roast vegetable dish, I used organic coconut oil.

I have tried several coconut oils in Canada and found the one I prefer; thus we have an Amazon subscription for it. It is the nicest and best price coconut oil we've been able to find - Nutiva Organic Steam refined oil. In South Africa we used to bulk order from Crede.

Affiliate Disclaimer:

Some of the links on this blog are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through those links, at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products and services that I truly believe in. Your support helps keep this blog running — thank you!

The herbs & spices

Some spices can be an irritant for some people. I am not one of those people, but my husband is. If you are, you can limit the use of spices with this dish and use more herbs (herbs are often less irritating for people).

Here is what I used:

Sea salt
Black pepper
Cumin
Smoked Paprika
Dried basil (very little)
Oregano
Thyme

I like to use lots of salt, because since we don't eat any processed food, our diet is very low in sodium. But also, it makes it tasty.

Cumin is not for everyone, but I like it. I also find it along with the pepper is what makes this dish and therefore I wouldn't omit it. Just use less if you're worried some people may not like it.

If you don't add onion or garlic to the dish, you can also use some onion and garlic powder. I sometimes find onion powder gives a nice unique flavor compared to pieces of onion. It is a very used spice in our home.

Summary of how to make this dish

Now that we've covered all the elements with my tips and random health information. Here is a summary of how to make this dish.

Cook the root vegetables in an instant pot or on the stove.

Cook any cruciferous vegetables in a pot on the stove.

Cut onion and garlic and add it to a roasting tray with some coconut oil (or oil of your choosing).

Put that in the oven and roast. I used the Air Roast function, but normal roasting function will work too. Depending on how well your oven circulates heat - you may need to push around the vegetables more or less.

While that is going cut the other vegetables you plan to add and add them as you finish cutting them. I recommend starting with the ones that take the longest to cook.

Add the broccoli last because it is the one that burns easily.

Push around the veg periodically as you think necessary to make sure all of it has some oil.

Sprinkle your herbs and spices and make sure all of the vegetables get some.

When all the vegetables are properly cooked - turn on the broil/grill function and stare at the food to make sure it doesn't burn. I find it only takes a few minutes for it to get a nice roasting color and you can remove it.

If you want to end it off and serve: Add some cheese. I added feta cheese, but fried halloumi would work well as well.

Feta cheese added at the end when the dish was removed from the oven

Wrapping It Up:

Roasted vegetables are a simple yet flavorful addition to any meal. Lots of combinations, they’re a go-to dish for special gatherings. The beauty of roasting lies in its ability to transform humble vegetables into something truly delicious. So, grab your favorite veggies, season generously, and let the oven work its magic.

Enjoy every bite! 🌟🍽️

Carmen