Pan Roasted Vegetables (from frozen!)

An easy vegetable side that won’t heat up your kitchen and no waiting for the oven to preheat or competing for oven space/temperature.  Grab your bag of frozen veggies, add a swoosh of olive oil and you’re about 2o minutes away from golden, pan roasted vegetables that are an easy anytime side!  

I want to be like a super cool vegetable ninja.  I read one time that the ideal is to serve three different kinds of vegetables with a meal.  Sometimes I hit that, sometimes I’m far from it, but my goal is to serve amazing and varied vegetables that everyone loves.  Notice I said “goal” not “reality”.  When I do achieve it though, it’s super rewarding when my 4-year-old says, “What’s this?!  I never tried that before, but I know I don’t like it.”  Umm, thanks for that, bud! 

“Pan-roasted” just sounds fancy, like I’m secretly the sous chef at a trendy bistro in Soho instead of shouting at my younger son not to throw food at the dog while he laughs joyously.  I can imagine the glamorous life, right? 🙂  So first up grab your bag of frozen vegetables — I’ve done this with tons of types: broccoli, broccoli-cauliflower mix, peas, green beans, vegetable medley, even Brussels sprouts, and I’ve gotten great results every time.  And it’s easy to do two bags at once, just bump up your pan size.   Throw down a swoosh of olive oil and throw in your veggies.

Throw in some salt, pepper or whatever seasonings you like along with minced garlic and onion if that interest you.   Pop on the lid and turn the burner to medium high.  Almost every mix takes about 20 minutes, and I just stir them every five minutes or so, but you can definitely move on to other prep.  Towards the end when they really start to brown up, you need to watch them a bit more carefully, but this dish doesn’t need a ton of attention from you until the very end.

Once you start seeing the vegetables brown up and stick to the pan, you’re set!  If you’re using a type of vegetable that’s a little on the tougher side like Brussels sprouts, take it off the burner once it’s browned enough and just leave the lid on for a few extra minutes to make sure they soften up to your liking.  That’s it, easy pan-roasted vegetables with no pre-planning, chopping or oven heating.

Quick update:  when I’m super duper in a hurry, I go ahead and microwave the vegetable bag per the directions and then just give it that quick golden-brown finish in the skillet with oil and seasoning.  The golden brown on the sweet potatoes below is the product of about five minutes of skilleting post microwaving the bag from frozen.  Not sure if that’s a verb, but it is now :).  So start from frozen or get the golden brown post microwave — totally up to you!

So any way you start it, finish those veggies in a skillet to get the nice and toasty roasted without the time or oven heating up of traditional oven roasting! Any other mixes that you’ve tried?  I’d love to hear in the comments.

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