Oven Roasted Vegetables: Follow up with balsamic vinegar

Even though I already made one oven roasted vegetable tutorial I wanted to add a few more details in this post. Since the first one I've been roasting anything I can get my hands on. This past weekend the line up was baby carrots, tokyo turnips, chioggia beets, baby parsnips, beets, and asparagus. I've also roasted cauliflower and cabbage with great success.

After making several batches over the past few weeks I've now begun adding in balsamic vinegar to the olive oil before I roast the veggies.

Balsamic brand Aceto Balsamico del Duca and Olive Oil from The Olive Bar

The portions I've been using are to take 1/2 cup olive oil and add 1/8 cup balsamic vinegar

1. I place the oil and vinegar in a medium sized bowl and one by one toss each variety of the veggies into the mixture coating them well before removing them with a slotted spoon and placing them on a parchment covered cookie tray.

Keep them separated by type so if one cooks faster than the others you can easily remove it while allowing the rest to continue roasting.

2. I've also lowered the cooking temperature to 350º and opt to cook them longer (around 35 minutes for most root veggies cut into small pieces).

3. When they're done cooking I use a spatula and move them from the pan to plates to allow them to cool faster.

4. Once cooled I toss them together in a medium sized bowl.

5. I divide them into individual serving portions, allow them to cool, then freeze them to add to pastas, soups, stews, or to enjoy as a reheated side dish.

This past weekend I purchased a bottle of Koroneiki Olive Oil made in California (not Greece, they have two varieties) at The Olive Bar in downtown Campbell.

Shop The Olive Bar online or at 232 E. Campbell Ave · Campbell, CA 95008

The store specializes in Olive Oils and balsamic vinegars and allows you to sample them before purchasing. I didn't think there would be a huge difference between them but wow, the flavors were completely different. Of the two I tried the California Korneiki had a much more pronounced, brighter, fresh flavor to it than the more even flavored, imported Italian olive oil. For roasting I thought the stronger would be better with the potential of adding more depth of flavor to the veggies. This is when my supertaster taste buds come in handy.

The Aceto Balsamico del Duca brand balsamic can be found at Bertucelli's La Villa Delicatessen in Willow Glen in their gourmet grocery section.

I doubt I'll be doing anymore roasted vegetables posts but if you have any suggestions of what to roast or flavor them with please feel free to leave them in the comments!