Food - Drink
Why It Pays To Roast Vegetables On The Floor Of Your Oven
By LAUREN ROTHMAN
Roasting is a particularly delicious way to prepare vegetables that intensifies their flavor and brings out their natural sweetness. Tossing some veggies with olive oil and roasting them on your oven rack is easy, but there are ways to improve this basic formula, one of which is to roast vegetables on the floor of your oven instead.
The bottom of your oven is the hottest area of the appliance, and Bon Appétit recommends a "hard roast" on the floor of the oven for sturdy vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, and beets. These veggies benefit from the searing heat on the oven's floor, which softens them and creates a deeply browned outer crust.
To try this method, preheat your oven to 450 degrees F, then cut your vegetables into even pieces and toss them with fat and seasonings. Add the veggies to a sheet pan, place it directly on the oven floor, stir the veggies after 10 minutes of cooking, then check on them every five minutes until they are deeply browned and fragrant.