Don’t Burn Your Roasted Root Vegetables

Published on Monday, March 2, 2009, by CHOW Video Team / Edit Post

Don’t Burn Your Roasted Root Vegetables

CHOW Associate Food Editor Kate Ramos has seen bad things happen to roasted root vegetables. The problem: The veggies are unevenly cut. It’s not a matter of the type of root, it’s just a matter of cutting the vegetables into equal chunks.

CHOW Tips are the shared wisdom of our community. If you’ve figured out some piece of food, drink, or cooking wisdom that you’d like to share on video (and you can be in San Francisco), email Meredith Arthur and tell us what you’ve got in mind.

ALLCHOW Tip
POST A COMMENT |8 Comments

COMMENT

  • @ChefDell, such misinformation gets posted because the whole culinary world is fraught with misinformation. This video, to anyone who actually thinks, is obvious nonsense, but unfortunately, there are many "authorities" out there who never think. They just repeat the dogma they were taught.

    If you think about it, this is certainly not something that is limited to cooking. In many fields, despite...+READ

    @ChefDell, such misinformation gets posted because the whole culinary world is fraught with misinformation. This video, to anyone who actually thinks, is obvious nonsense, but unfortunately, there are many "authorities" out there who never think. They just repeat the dogma they were taught.

    If you think about it, this is certainly not something that is limited to cooking. In many fields, despite what experience tells them, they cling to what they have been taught.-COLLAPSE

  • This is a horrible "tip". All the posters are correct that different veg will cook for different periods of time and the trick is to adjust the size of the pieces so that they will all be done at the same time. I do just what chililala states when I roast off sweet and white potatoes along with a chicken. Larger cuts of sweet potato and smaller white potatoes and all is good. How does such...+READ

    This is a horrible "tip". All the posters are correct that different veg will cook for different periods of time and the trick is to adjust the size of the pieces so that they will all be done at the same time. I do just what chililala states when I roast off sweet and white potatoes along with a chicken. Larger cuts of sweet potato and smaller white potatoes and all is good. How does such mis-information get posted like that?-COLLAPSE

  • Density is the key. While you might think beets and potatoes have similar densities, they really don't. Weigh them and you'll see.

    That being said, DEFINITELY some take longer than others. Beets are a weird case. They cook like no other vegetable I know.

    But all in all, the advice here just doesn't make sense to me -- no offense meant.

  • I agree with the above posters completely. What she is saying is false. Beets take far longer than...well, just about anything. If you are roasting parsnips and potatoes you have to put the potatoes in first, even if you have parboiled them. And certain vegetables do not respond well to being cut. Beets is one of them.

  • I don't even get what her point is. I'm just going to assume I am missing the point. Otherwise, what she's saying makes no sense.

  • And beets take forever to cook! If it put them in with the same size potatoes, the potatoes are done in it seems like half the time.

  • I don't even know if the similar density rule exactly applies...When I roast potatoes and sweet potatoes together, for example, the sweet potatoes always cook faster, so if I cut them to the same size, they will be overdone by the time the potatoes are cooked. My technique is to slightly vary the size of the dice based on the cooking time for each vegetable, so in this case the sweet potatoes...+READ

    I don't even know if the similar density rule exactly applies...When I roast potatoes and sweet potatoes together, for example, the sweet potatoes always cook faster, so if I cut them to the same size, they will be overdone by the time the potatoes are cooked. My technique is to slightly vary the size of the dice based on the cooking time for each vegetable, so in this case the sweet potatoes would be cut a bit larger than the potatoes. Equally, if I was adding carrots to the mix, I would cut them slightly smaller than the potatoes, because they take longer to cook.-COLLAPSE

  • Ms. Ramos, with all due respect, I think you misspoke. Did you really mean to say there's no difference in cooking times among vegetables cut to the same size? So if I cut carrots and zucchini to 1-inch cubes and cook them together, they'll both be done at the same time? Tomatoes and rutabagas? Spinach and kale?

    Obviously, that's wrong.

    I think you meant to say that vegetables of similar...+READ

    Ms. Ramos, with all due respect, I think you misspoke. Did you really mean to say there's no difference in cooking times among vegetables cut to the same size? So if I cut carrots and zucchini to 1-inch cubes and cook them together, they'll both be done at the same time? Tomatoes and rutabagas? Spinach and kale?

    Obviously, that's wrong.

    I think you meant to say that vegetables of similar density have similar cooking times.-COLLAPSE