Noodles: While writing this post, I realized that I really appreciate the word “shriveled”. It serves its purpose so, so well.

That said, let’s talk about roasted vegetables.  The top 3,000+ Google search items for “lasagna” are recipe blogs (versus MY blog, ahem ahem), so I might as well delve into the wonderful world of cooking for a quick second.  Oneee Mississippppp....done.  

Anyway, there’s a movement going around (specifically, on all those recipe blogs you’re probably reading instead of this one).  It’s called “Everything tastes better if you cover it with salt and oil and roast it at 500 degrees for fifteen minutes, stirring halfway through the cooking time!”  The “ETBYCWSOR5DFMSHTCT” movement, for shortness and ease.  

I am here today to take issue with this movement.  In short, it is not true. 

Admittedly, potatoes and sweet potatoes, being the classy, upscale vegetables they are, excel under this type of treatment.  Other things do too.  I assume.  I wouldn’t know because every non-root vegetable I’ve ever roasted has either 1) been burned to a crisp (because, 500 degrees is about as hot as the surface of the sun, by gum), or, 2) shriveled into nothingness.  Did you know that roasting alone can turn three cups of broccoli into 1/8 teaspoon of broccoli?  It’s true. 

Root vegetables, on the other hand, retain their mass and take at least four times longer to cook than the recipes advise.  I would mind this more, except it guarantees they won’t incinerate while my back is turned.  Feeling confident in my root vegetable roasting abilities (RVRA’s), I roasted some beets last week.  They behaved well in the oven, barely screamed at all, unlike carrots, which shout obscenities the whole time they’re cooking.  

Unfortunately, when the beets came out of the oven, roasty, toasty, crinkly-edged and beaming, they were still beets.  The food bloggers will have you believe that roasting turns all vegetables into French fries (turnip fries, anyone?).  Just cut it in long strips, salt it, and stick it in the oven, then serve it to your ecstatically thankful children with homemade organically grown ketchup, for optional dipping.  

Friends.  

Beets, when roasted, do not taste like French fries.  They taste like beets.  Except more so.  

I consider this to be a public service announcement.  You have been warned