Roasted Root Vegetables

It's totally the time of the year to crave warm, baked starchy goodness. The nice thing about this recipe is that you get a wide variety of vitamins and types of vegetables. (Not just white potatoes)

When you cook this recipe for yourself, try to add in types of vegetables you might not eat as frequently along with the more common veggies (again, white potatoes are a pretty common food). Or think about throwing in types of vegetables that are different colors (and contain different minerals). With this recipe, you could easily add in cauliflower florettes, beets, turnips, celeriac root, fennel, or other dense vegetables.

Roasted Root Vegetables
I based what I did on this excellent and clear recipe from Wolfgang Puck. But I did a couple little things differently.


organic carrots
organic potatoes (Yukon)
organic parsnips
organic common sweet potatoes
organic Japanese sweet potatoes
organic cold-pressed olive oil
organic cold-pressed safflower oil
salt
pepper

1) Slice the vegetables into 1/2-inch thick slices.
2) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
3) Toss the vegetables in olive oil, safflower oil, salt, and pepper. Use just enough oil so that the vegetables are lightly coated.
4) Once you've tossed them, be sure to organize them so they all lay flat on baking sheet. I put them on three large cookie sheets. I used three because of the amount of vegetables I had. Use however many baking sheets you need so that all your vegetables lay flat on the baking sheet, single-layer. Avoid any piling or layering.
5) Cook for 45 minutes. Use a metal spatula to stir the vegetables every 15 minutes. Whenever you stir them, be sure to again have the vegetables lay in a flat array on the pan before returning to them to the oven.

Meaner, Greaner, Leaner
* Safflower oil. It's pretty cool. I'd never tried it before, but it's great when cooking foods for long periods at high temperatures. Also, recent studies show that it is high in linoleic acid, which is an essential fatty acid. But since these are recent studies, I don't want to suddenly act like safflower oil is some super-oil. Therefore, I bought a small bottle and mixed it in this recipe with olive oil, which I know helps lower or manage bad cholesterol and increase or support good cholesterol.

More Pictures from the Process