Veggie roasting

one of the purposes of the blog was to use ingredients I have personally never used before and techniques i’ve never tried. I also want to learn seasons of produce to always use the most in season produce for price and freshness. I personally love squash but i’ve never roasted it before, its winter and butternut squash is in season so let’s roast some squash! but I don’t want to JUST roast the squash because I don’t like the oven so let’s try smoother ways to “roast” veggies, so for this we are using three techniques, original roasting in the oven, using an air fryer, and pan searing them. Ryan and I decided while at the store we also wanted to try eggplant, carrots and zucchini, neither of us remember having roasted eggplant and we both generally enjoy carrots and zucchini roasted so we have a few different veggies in a few different ways.

again i’ve personally never worked with butternut squash so I had to do a little research on how to handle them and what not. I learned that you have to peel them but the skin is pretty thin so you can just use a veggie peeler like you would use for potatoes and I have PLENTLY of experience with that so I knocked out the prep in no time. I also had to scoop out the seeds but I have plenty of experience scooping out pumpkin guts and this was no different. now for the eggplant again how to look up how to work with this it all said that large pieces were the move so cut it into rather large portions. carrots and zucchini I just cut into dime to nickel size medallions.

when it comes to roasting, for the oven lined the sheet pan with parchment paper so the eggplant doesn’t stick and then I tossed the veggies in olive oil salt and pepper and then roasted them at 400 for 20-30 minutes.

in the air fryer I also tossed all the veggies in olive oil salt and pepper and like the oven did 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

pan frying again olive oil, salt, pepper, and about medium to medium high heat until the outside was getting golden brown.

now for the results for the oven roasted they didnt get as golden brown as I wanted but i’m pretty sure they were over oiled. the air fryer veggies came out fantastic and were probably my personal favorite, the pan seared did not go great they weren’t awful but I definitely will be skipping this method entirely in the future. my new go to method will most likely be air fryer for butternut squash carrots and zucchini. I did learn that I am not a fan of roasted eggplant, you live you learn.