SECTUAL

Daaayyyuummm...

So dinner for the past few days has consisted of ONLY roasted vegetables (salt, pepper, butter, olive oil), and a small pan of (cooked) brown rice topped with cheese and spinach, just thrown in the oven while the veggies are roasting.

I LOVE it when the rice gets crunchy around the edges of the pan with the cheese on top, gets all nice and golden brown. I add butter around the boundaries of the pan just to ensure maximum crunch for those toasty edges.

The roasted vegetables though, that's what is REALLY getting me excited for future possibilities.

I've been roasting mushrooms, broccoli, fresh Brussels sprouts...

But what really gave me this idea was the sweet peppers.

Whole roasted sweet peppers are BEYOND delicious. It's INSANEEEE. They're sooo juicy.

So I got the idea to roast WHOLE onions.

Yellow onions, on the smaller side. But maybe I'd even try roasting an entire purple onion too.

It just depends on how the smaller ones turn out.

Of course this is anything but a revolutionary concept, I know, but...

I've personally always been accustomed to slicing and dicing all those vegetables before cooking them and it never occurred to me that they could just be chucked in the oven WHOLE.

TBH every cooking recipe I've ever seen ALWAYS involves chopping everything up.

I kinda think it's time to stop cutting up the vegetables so much.

I think it's time to roast 'em whole.

I do love me some roasted, buttery, salted broccoli...

In fact, it's probably my most favorite food.

Broccoli has been my most longstanding favorite food since I was a kid.

But apparently, the healthiest way to eat whole, fresh broccoli is by chopping it longways into smaller/manageable pieces, letting it sit for awhile...

And basically eating it raw.

Chopping the broccoli a little bit starts the process of sulforaphane creation...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulforaphane

Same applies to cabbage and other super sulfury veggies.

Best chopped a little and eaten raw to maximize that sulforaphane.

It's insanely healthy.

That said, I will always mix it up and eat these foods raw, roasted, boiled, etc.

But I will definitely be incorporating a lot more raw broccoli and cabbage into my diet.

I was already rockin' that raw purple cabbage lately anyway.

It's similar to the method of chopping garlic and letting it sit for long enough to start the process of allicin creation.

Apparently, sulfur rich foods are a supreme key to health.

Buttery roasted vegetables are GREAT for lubing the innards.

It does give you some pretty epic gas though... which I honestly kind of enjoy.

Some of the Hello Fresh meal kits have roasted green beans. They always came out too hard.

Hmmm.

Roasted green beans...

I dunno.

Doesn't strike me as the ideal food to roast for some reason.

I will try it and report back.

They'll be frozen though, ain't got no fresh green beans and I suspect the "fresh" part is what leads to the hardness.

You really gotta boil 'em for a considerable amount of time to soften them up.

Reminds me of this one time...

We're not gonna talk about it.

I may have even posted about it in the past but...

I'm not gonna "REHASH" the incident...

Whole roasted yellow onion, absolutely delicious and highly recommend.

I would also suggest pulling the onion apart little by little every 20 min. or so while it's roasting, and applying a little more butter each time...

During the last 15 min. of roasting, pull it in half entirely and put the last little bit of butter on it.

Should be perfect by the time it's done.

It's better than I was expecting.

I could have roasted it without ever pulling it apart, but I think to REALLY get the finish I wanted would have taken a lot more time and the other stuff I was cooking along with it didn't need to stay in that long.

So I mean technically if it's pulled apart over time, is it still WHOLE roasted?

Meh, yes and no in my opinion.

I would have to start cooking JUST the onion like at least 20 minutes before putting anything in there on the pan with it if I wanted to truly roast a whole onion and never expose the inside directly.

May do that sometime, but I wasn't willing to spend that much time on it tonight.