Vegetables are the lifeblood of my healthy meal preps, so naturally, I need a lot of them every week.
But they can take some time to prep, let’s be real. The best, most time-efficient way to cook up a bunch of vegetables? Roast them!
You might be surprised by this answer, but it’s true. Even if you are going to make soup, roasting vegetables ahead of time makes your soup so much more flavorful. But there’s something super satisfying and helpful about having roasted veggies prepped and ready to go. They’ll come in handy in so many dishes.
Roasting Veggies 101: The Basics
- When you apply heat to vegetables through any cooking method (steaming, boiling, microwaving, roasting), they lose some nutrients. But that doesn’t mean they’re no longer healthy! If roasting vegetables makes them taste amazing to you, keep doing it because it’s better than not eating them.
- That being said, some vegetables, when roasted, have more to offer in terms of nutrients. Additionally, this method of cooking makes it easier for your body to absorb them.
- Root vegetables are the probably the best when roasted, but you can pop any veggie in the oven and make it taste amazing (as long as you keep an eye on some of the smaller and thinner ones, like kale and asparagus!).
Obviously, not all veggies are made the same. Each group has different optimal cooking times. How long you cook veggies also depends on how small you chop them. Roasting a whole potato takes a lot longer than roasting a potato chopped into wedges! And if you’re dicing it into 1-inch pieces, it’s even faster.
When roasting veggies at 425 degrees, here’s how long they’ll need to stay in the oven:
- Kale: 5-10 minutes
- Asparagus, green beans, peppers, yellow squash and zucchini: 10-20 minutes
- Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli and tomatoes: 15-25 minutes
- Onions, beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips and carrots: 30-45 minutes
- Butternut squash, acorn squash and spaghetti squash: 20-60 minutes depending on the size
This recipe is NOT a full meal prep like most of my other recipes. So I suggest that while those veggies are roasting, you also cook up some rice or quinoa and throw some tofu, fish or chicken in a pan on the stove to turn this recipe into a complete meal.
Additionally, you can roast vegetables at a lower temperature (400 degrees is generally a good rule of thumb) if you are worried you’ll accidentally burn something or if your oven tends to run hot. Experiment a little bit; sometimes a slower roast at a lower temperature can develop more flavor.
Seasoning and flavor profile ideas for roasted veggies
The recipe below just has salt, pepper and garlic powder (my go-to for everything) but here are some ways to spice veggies up in the oven.
- Sweet potato: add cumin, a small dash of cayenne and cinnamon, OR add agave syrup
- Broccoli: toss in lemon juice and minced garlic; add a pinch of red pepper flakes
- Zucchini and yellow squash: add paprika and oregano; they’re also good with fresh or dried thyme
- Red potatoes: thyme and/or rosemary
- Asparagus and green beans: add minced garlic, lemon juice, marjoram, dill
- Carrots: add dill, parsley, cayenne, za’atar, or agave syrup
When in doubt, just add a little more black pepper and some garlic powder!
I hope you enjoy the recipe below! Learning how to properly roast veggies changed my life, and I’m pretty sure it will change yours, too.
Roasted Veggie Meal Prep Ideas
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Colorful Roasted Vegetables For Meal Prep
Ingredients
- 1 medium sweet potato cut into wedges
- 1 medium onion your choice, cut into wedges
- 1 head broccoli cut into small pieces
- 1 large yellow squash cut into wedges
- 4 tbsp (45 ml) oil such as olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 clove garlic minced
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425 F (220 C). After washing and cutting your vegetables, line two baking trays with foil (optional).
- Next, toss the veggies in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of oil each and salt and pepper to taste. I suggest doing 1 veggie group at a time to keep them separate. After you're done with one group of veggies, dump the bowl out on the prepared tray, then add the next group of veggies in the same bowl so you don't have to do a ton of dishes. Reminder: This works as long as the seasonings are the same.
- On one tray, place the sweet potato and onion together (they cook longer) and the other place the broccoli and squash. Make sure there’s some space between the chopped pieces if possible.
- Add the minced garlic to the broccoli before placing the trays in the oven.
- Bake the broccoli and squash for about 20 minutes and the sweet potato and onions for about 30 minutes. You'll know they're done when you see them getting crispy and a bit fork tender.
- Remove from the oven, let them cool and store in meal prep containers in the fridge, or set them side and use them in your meal preps for the rest of the week (if you're batch prepping all at once.)
Gloria Wright says
Enjoyed learning about roasting vegtables.