roasted vegetables.. how did i mess this up?

iamkelskels

I tried to make a simple roasted veggies dish... I cubed eggplant, cut up some carrots and asparagus, and chopped up a bit of onion, tossed in a few grape tomatoes, drizzled it in olive oil and mixed in some thyme and basil... and somehow, i think a piece of eggplant exploded in the oven?? I put in the oven at 400 for 25 minutes, and the eggplant shrank and turned an unappealing brown and the veggies are not evenly cooked... i'm just so confused how this could have come out badly..

help?

crudd123

Google roasted vegetables recipes and lots of recipes come up! Maybe you can compare your recipe to one and see what went wrong! I've only done cauliflower like that before and it turned out ok but if I remember right I only left it in oven for 20 minutes for so! Good luck to you!

AmeChops

The eggplant (aubergine?) and asparagus will take a lot less time to cook than the carrot - try roasting the carrot and onions for a while then throwing the other stuff in once the carrots have started to soften :-))

marycmeadows

Eggplant is a very particular veggie. and the others.... may have just have been too thick or whatever.... Potatoes are weird like that too, you have to make sure to cut them thin enough..... cauliflower, green beans, and broccoli are pretty easy to roast. ((Carrots are SOOO dense - try other veggies))

jamk1446

Hmmm. Eggplant is a pretty soft veggie, it may not have needed to cook as long as the rest of the dish. Maybe next time, add them in after the rest have been cooking a few minutes.

How crowded was your pan? To properly and evenly roast, everything should be cut into roughly equal sized pieces and be spread in a single layer. If they are overcrowded and overlapping a great deal, they aren't really going to roast, they will be more like steamed. If your pan isn't big enough, I would spread them out among two pans and rotate racks halfway through cooking.

mtaylor33557

They might have needed different cooking times and temps. All vegetables cook differently, if you are going to cook them together, you have to pair the ones that cook in about the same time.

Meg_78

Yep I agree with lat100, you probably just had your cooking times off, veges like tomatoes, aspag etc will take much less time than root veges, so you would want to roast the others for a while first then add the lighter veggies. I don't know about eggplant, as I'm not a big fan but parsnip, carrots, squash, bell peppers and pumpkin are also fantastic roasters!, don't give up!

iamkelskels

Yes, they were all piled on top of another, so that makes sense. And I'll remember that about the different cooking times. Thanks for the help, everyone!