This recipe has morphed over time, as all recipes do. It started out as a dish my late friend, Cate, used to make when her kids were little. She’d put chicken legs, potatoes and carrots in a cast iron skillet and baked it for an hour. I expanded that to, from bottom to top, a full cut-up chicken, potatoes, carrots, zucchini and onion in a cast iron Dutch oven. After about 45 minutes, I brought the chicken to the top, then put it back in the oven with the lid off to brown for the last 15 minutes. The chicken and zucchini made juice that we’d pour over the potatoes.
When both my daughters went away to school, I eliminated the chicken and roasted a big variety of vegetables. A typical summer day here is clear and warm until mid-afternoon, when it normally clouds up and rains. The temperature can drop from 85 to 60 in one cloudburst. This is great cooking weather! I don’t know many people that bake in July or August, but we do!
Roasting vegetables is a great way to use up the overflowing garden bounty. Your dish can be different every time, depending on what’s available. If you don’t have a Dutch oven, you can probably use a large baking dish or a lasagna pan. I’ve never had anything but cast iron, so you will have to experiment with what works best for you.
In your baking pan, layer your vegetables. From bottom to top, these are my favorites:
potatoes, quartered
carrots, 1/2″ slices
beets, quartered
zucchini, thick slices
apples, quartered – one or two
onion, thick slices to make rings that cover the top
a few tablespoons of water to keep it from burning until the vegetables start releasing water
Bake at 375 covered. You may want to reduce your temperature to 350. I think 375 works well with cast iron. Experiment! After 45 minutes, check to see if the potatoes are done. When they are, the rest is cooked through. You can bring the potatoes to the top and brown them if you like. I’ve never done this, though.
Sometimes I leave out the potatoes and serve the vegetables over rice. Sometimes I add a box of drained tofu between the beets and the zucchini.
Jack cheese is really good melted over the top of individual servings. I serve steamed kale with this. Greens don’t survive roasting! This dish lasts for several meals, and if there are leftovers, they go into a pot of soup.
Root crops work best for this dish, and since so many are ready in fall, this is a great dish to warm up the house on chilly evenings. Experiment with your favorites. This is another no-recipe recipe with lots of flexibility! That’s the only way to cook, if you ask me.
Enjoy!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I LOVE your blog, I garden, and freeze it, and dry it, and make fermented raw pickles from all the “stuff” I grow in my garden. My husband and I were just thinking of having a try at roasting vieggies. So this article is GREAT!! We live south of you in SF, so I am really enjoying your articles. Have bookmarked your site. Wonderful. :)
Hi Robin, and thank you! :) I’m so glad you find my blog informative! The great part of this recipe is that you can put anything in it. Potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, fresh herbs – it’s like making soup from what’s on hand, but it doesn’t take as long.