A Dash of Healthy: How to Roast Vegetables

Welcome to A Dash of Healthy! Columnist Corinne Fierro is a girl on a mission to reinvent what it means to be healthy in college, one meal at a time. She’s here to guide you through the kitchen, from the aisles of your grocery store to the finished plate. Catch Corinne every week for a new healthy recipe, along with her favorite tips, tricks and advice for eating well on a college budget.

Welcome to the second edition of A Dash of Healthy: Back to Basics.

When school starts getting more intense (exams this week anyone??) our diets tend to get more blah, or worse, unhealthy. Having a stash of fresh, flavorful roasted veggies to add to a meal makes eating healthy one less thing to stress about.

When you go out to eat, the vegetable  are usually on the side of the meal. The care that the chef takes to prepare them goes unnoticed in the face of a big piece of meat or a bowl of pasta. But cooking vegetables without making them mushy, bland or just plain boring is hard to do, especially if you’re not practiced in preparing vegetables at all.

Luckily, roasting vegetables is an almost fool-proof way to create a side that is packed with flavor and great texture. While you can roast any vegetable, my classic blend is red and orange bell peppers, onions and tomatoes. The flavors compliment each other, and they reheat well in the microwave so you can eat them for up to five days. Plus, they’re cheap–bonus!

However, no matter what vegetables you use, always keep in mind that you need a good amount of oil for crispiness. You should also cut your vegetables evenly into one and a half inch pieces so that they cook quickly and evenly.

What you’ll need:

4 small tomatoes or 2 large tomatoes
2 red bell peppers
1 onion (any variety will work)
olive oil
salt
roasting dish

What to do:

1. Cut washed vegetables into one and a half inch pieces, place in roasting dish

2. Douse vegetables with about 2 tbsp olive oil, toss to coat, making sure that all vegetables have some oil on them

3. Finish with 2 tsp of salt sprinkled evenly over the vegetables

4. Bake in the oven at 425 (or if your oven is extremely hot like mine, try 400) for about 20 minutes or until the skin of the vegetables is bubbled or browned.

5. Pair with the rest of your meals for the week!