oven-roasted broccoli

Please tell me you have tried this. We eat our broccoli this way 90% of the time. And we have it every single week. Yes I am serious. Don’t you have side dishes that are frequent visitors? The stand-by, consistently good, easy-to-make-in-your-sleep vegetables?

This is ours. I was mortified when I was searching my blog-of-over-4-years and ALL THOSE POSTS and not one, not one of them talked about this ever-present crispy-crunchy yummy broccoli dish. This is the green vegetable I have to thank. The vegetable my sons became comfortable with. It is broccoli that helped me round out many meals—otherwise full of proteins and carbohydrates. I could count on oven-roasted broccoli to add that certain special semblance of nutrition to the diets of my growing boys.

Further into their palate-development, my sons welcome a plethora of vegetables onto their plates and into their systems. But still. Our lives changed when I first lubed up broccoli in olive oil, twisted chunks of salt over the tray and set it to rest in a very hot oven. For 20 minutes or so. Please tell me you will try this?

Oven-roasted broccoli
serves as many as you want.

oven 400
bake 25 minutes
(I confess: 425 for 20 minutes works too)
olive oil
coarse salt
optional: Italian herbs, pepper

hint: if there is olive oil hanging out on the bottom of the tray, rub the brocolli’s little heads in it before you pop them into the oven. They love the extra ‘love’ and will reward you with crunchy bites in the end…

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