So what do you do when you have leftover vegetables? There’s a lot of ways you could skin this one: boiling, making it into tempura, turning it into a soup – or if you’re me, roasting. I decided on roasting because it’s fuss-free and I wasn’t to keen on handling the cooking process so much.

I’m no expert, but here’s how I did mine over an afternoon.

What you need:

  • Small potatoes
  • Baby carrots
  • Whole garlic cloves
  • Quartered onion
  • Sprigs of thyme
  • Olive oil
  • Salt
  • Pepper

What to do:

  1. Cut the vegetables up: Trim off the carrot tops (if you want to) and quarter your onions. Don’t cut the potatoes and garlic, the skin forms a nice barrier for the mushy inside when it’s roasted.
  2. Coat the vegetables with olive oil.
  3. Arrange nicely on a baking tray.
  4. Sprinkle a generous amount of salt and pepper. If you’d like, turn over the vegetables and coat it underneath as well.
  5. Sprinkle some thyme leaves and random sprigs.
  6. Pop into a pre-heated oven for 230°C.
  7. Roast until tender, about 40 minutes.

Feel free to use whatever vegetables you have in your kitchen. Tomatoes, broccoli, eggplant, etc. are examples of other vegetables that would be pretty good roasted. Though you may want to avoid the leafy sorts – those will lose form, moisture and wilt in the process.

Anyway, rather last minute, I decided that I wanted to not just have roasted vegetables on their own but to also eat it with pasta. So I quickly got my spare linguine pasta out, cooked it, threw in some cheese (I only had mozzarella at the time) and added it to my roasted vegetables that were happily cooling off on the counter.

If you’ve cooked it long enough, your vegetables with have a nice tender feel, as well as being full of amazing flavors. I must say I rather enjoyed the sweetness of the carrots, the earthy taste of the potatoes and sharpness of onions. Though eating a whole garlic clove might not be your thing – I’d suggest a forkful of pasta with those to soften the strong taste a little. I usually top off my pasta with some chili flakes. How about some Tabasco for added flavor?

So there, a real simple meal that’s pretty filling, delicious and (kinda) healthy. All in all, I only spent less than half an hour in the kitchen – if you take out the time it takes for the vegetables to roast.

Recommended Reading:

  1. It’s roasted veg, but not as we know it – The Guardian
  2. The Ultimate Guide to Roasting Vegetables – One Green Planet