Vegetables suffer in most home kitchens. They get boiled grey, steamed sad, or microwaved into mush. Treat them with the respect you would give a piece of meat, and they become the most exciting thing on the plate.
Roast hot and dry
Most vegetables love a 220C oven and a thin slick of oil. Crowding the tray steams them — give them space and they brown, caramelise and concentrate.
Salt early, dress late
Salt vegetables before roasting and they keep their texture and seasoning. Vinegars and acids should mostly go on after cooking — they cause greens to dull and lose colour.
Char where you can
Hard char on the edges of broccoli, cabbage, peppers and asparagus tastes more like steak than vegetable. A blazing hot pan or grill is your friend.
Smaller is faster, bigger is better
Cut vegetables for roasting larger than feels right — they keep moisture inside while the outside crisps. Tiny dice steams; chunky pieces caramelises.
Finish with fat or acid
Olive oil, butter, miso, tahini, yoghurt, lemon, vinegar. The combination of caramelised vegetables and a bright finishing element is what makes restaurant vegetables taste so much better than home ones.
Stop boiling unless you mean to
Boiling has its place — for stocks, for pasta, for blanching greens for thirty seconds. As a default cooking method for vegetables, it usually fails them.
Cook vegetables like you would cook anything else worth eating — with heat, fat, seasoning and attention — and even reluctant eaters will start asking for seconds.
