Easy and Festive Roasted Holiday Vegetables

Add holiday colors to your menu with this festive recipe!

Delicious any time of year, this combination of roasted vegetables will add the holiday colors of red and green to your Christmas or New Year's table. Easy to prepare, this recipe will leave you time to concentrate on the other items for your meal. 

I like my meals to look as good as they taste. While making a holiday dinner last December, I was inspired by my vegetable bin! Red peppers, green broccoli and white cauliflower. I realized that if I combined these, I could create a side dish that would add a very festive holiday touch to any Christmas or New Year's meal.

Almost ridiculously easy to prepare, this healthy recipe requires just one pan, so the cleanup efforts are minimal too. Roasted vegetables are delicious, and with three different kinds to choose from, you are sure to please everyone at the table. Don't be surprised if this becomes a new holiday tradition, as you may be asked to serve it every year!

Roasted Holiday Vegetables

(serves 4-6)

Ingredients:

2 red peppers, seeded and cut into chunks
2 cups broccoli, cut into bite sized florets
2 cups cauliflower, cut into bite sized florets
olive oil - several tablespoons
salt and pepper, to taste
Optional: balsamic vinegar, pine nuts or red pepper flakes as a garnish.

Note: If you are not serving mashed potatoes or any other starch with your meal, you may wish to add a couple of Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced (or Russet potatoes, peeled and sliced) next to the broccoli in the pan. Or - if you don't like cauliflower, just serving roasted red peppers and broccoli is pretty too!

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Lightly grease a roasting pan with olive oil.
3. Arrange prepared vegetables in the pan in 3 sections, with red peppers in the middle.
4. Drizzle vegetables with just enough olive oil to coat, and gently toss with a fork, but keep the different vegetables separated from each other.
5. Add coarse salt and pepper to taste. (I used fresh ground black pepper, but if you prefer black flecks not to show, white pepper may be used instead.)
6. Roast, uncovered for 20 - 30 minutes (depending on the size of the pieces), just until vegetables are easily pierced with a fork. Be careful not to overcook.
7. Serve directly from the roasting pan, or carefully transfer to a serving platter if desired, keeping the vegetables in separate rows of white, red and green.

If oven space is minimal, the vegetables can be roasted ahead of time, and gently re-warmed just before serving.

Although not necessary, feel free to add a splash of balsamic vinegar, a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts and/ or a dash of red pepper flakes for additional flavor, if you desire. Enjoy!

These vegetables and ornaments have similar coloring, don't you think?

I plan to make this recipe next week, but I don't want to wait that long to share the recipe, so I'm using last year's photos here.  (I must admit, I hope my photography has improved a bit since I took these!)

Have you ever roasted cauliflower or broccoli in the oven before?

Note: A version of this post was published by Yahoo Contributor Network. Unfortunately, much of the YCN content that was published no longer exists on the Internet, but full rights were returned to the authors - so I thought I would republish the full recipe here today. 

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